Archive of Our Own

When Nagito bolted upright in bed with a scream, Hajime was already awake to steady him.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. You’re safe. I’m right here.”

It was the fourteenth time in the last two-and-a-half weeks that Nagito had woken in the early morning hours with tears in his eyes, baggy t-shirt drenched in cold sweat. It was the fourteenth time in the last two-and-a-half weeks that Hajime sat with him, wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and held him close until he calmed down.

It took several minutes for Nagito’s breathing to return to a normal pace. 

“Can you…” Hajime’s voice cracked with sleep, and a touch of hesitation. It was no secret that Nagito was easy to spook. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” 

Nagito nudged him away and moved to lie down. “I’m fine. You should go back to bed.” 

His voice was impressively steady for someone still actively crying. Too bad for him, Hajime was determined not to let it be the fourteenth time in two-and-a-half weeks that he was stonewalled. He pulled Nagito back up. “You’re obviously not.”

“You have your video chat with Naegi-san at eight. I know you still have deliverables to finish up before the call starts. The last thing I want is to bother you with my silly problems now.” His voice gave a tremble that was quickly swallowed back as Hajime rubbed a soothing fist into the small of his back. “You need to be up soon.”

Hajime kept his hands weighted on his boyfriend’s body — one around his hip, another on his shoulder. Nagito could feign composure better than most, but Hajime knew what it looked like when he was out of his body.

“Forget Naegi and his to-do list. You know I’m already worried. I have been for days, Nagito. I’m not gonna stop being worried now, so you may as well tell me what’s up.” He picked his words carefully, for Nagito’s sake. Then he added, for his own, “I want to know what’s up.”

Nagito faltered for a long second. More than a long second. Hajime was about to resign himself to another night of dead on arrival discussion when Nagito sucked in a quick breath.

“It’s about the program,” he said, words forced. “The warehouse.”

“Oh.”

He wasn’t sure what else to say. That ‘the warehouse’ was crazy shorthand for attempted murder-suicide? That this was bound to happen eventually, and the fact that it had taken two whole years post-stasis for it to pop up in his psyche was already kind of a shocker?

It was probably for the best that his words decided to fail him. 

“That’s… a lot.”

Nagito refused to look at him. “It is, isn’t it?” He let out a soft laugh. “I hadn’t realized it was, until recently.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” The answer to that question was no. Hajime immediately rephrased. “I think you should talk about it. With me.” 

“I couldn’t. You have a very important call just a few hours from now, and—” 

Hajime cut him off. “Nagito, we do these conference calls literally every week. And I’m up. For good. Let’s make the most of that, yeah?” 

When Nagito went to brush off his hold on his shoulder, Hajime stopped him in his tracks. He grabbed Nagito’s hand (his good one — no prosthetics in bed) and gripped it tightly. 

Nagito’s poker face had gotten worse during the time he’d spent on Jabberwock. Despite his attempts to project otherwise, it didn’t seem like Nagito wanted to be let go. Accordingly, Hajime helped him lie back down, navigating  the two of them from their upright position down to the mattress, Nagito’s back to his bare chest. 

Hajime knew he’d been right when Nagito adjusted against him with a small hum. Hajime fastened his arms around him, tugging him closer. “So. What happens in the nightmares?”

“It’s a little different every time. Sometimes I’m preparing for it. You’d be surprised how mundane it was. In the dreams, I’m stacking fireworks into the truck’s tailgate, or I’m searching the factory to make sure all of the fire extinguishers but the grenades are off premises.” Each word was completely matter-of-fact. It made Hajime’s skin crawl. “A few times, I’ve found myself cutting a hole in that Monokuma plushie. I spend minutes testing to see if I can get a knife to stand upright inside it.” Nagito laughed under his breath. “That was harder than you’d think.”

He paused. Hajime felt his boyfriend’s heartbeat speed up. The Ultimate Nurse in his head provided his vitals: 102 BPM, irregular rhythm. Much too fast. 

Nagito continued. “Usually, I’ve already tied myself up. I’m on the warehouse floor,” he swallowed, “and I do exactly what I did that morning.”

Hajime tightened his hold on his boyfriend. “Nagito…” 

He was cut off. “No matter where I am, there’s duct tape over my mouth. I forget I’m able to scream.” Nagito hummed, pensive and distant. “I think that’s why I’ve been disturbing you. I apologize.”

Hajime inhaled shakily. He felt woozy. “No. You don’t need to be sorry about that. God. You should’ve told me sooner.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do.” Nagito rolled over to face him. When he met his eyes, Nagito’s brow furrowed. He cupped Hajime’s cheek in his hand. “Ah. The last thing I wanted to do was cause you distress, and I’ve gone and done it anyway.”

“No, no. This isn’t about me.” He placed his hand over Nagito’s, absently toying with the other’s fingers as his thoughts raced. “There needs to be something I can do. Anything.” 

He tabbed through his brain. The Ultimate Therapist and Neurologist were promising candidates for turning up knowledge that could help in a situation like this. He filtered out background noise and skimmed their collective knowledge of nightmare disorder. 

Nagito was almost certainly suffering from post traumatic nightmares. Lucky for them, their preferred treatment, image rehearsal therapy, seemed simple enough. He’d work with Nagito to rewrite the narrative of his nightmares using pen and paper to make them feel less threatening. The Ultimate Therapist helpfully informed him that while a typical course of IRT took about twelve weeks, some patients showed significant improvements in their quality of sleep after just one session. 

Somehow, Hajime doubted Nagito would be an easy case. He never was. Until they’d made some headway, Hajime would do his best to run damage control. He’d stock water bottles and snacks in a container on their nightstand to help Nagito regulate when he woke up in the middle of the night, not a far cry from the system he’d set up to keep Nagito fed way back during his active cancer treatment days. 

Hajime’s sleep schedule was pretty all over the place, too. Nagito usually stayed up waiting for him to come to bed, which really didn’t help this sort of thing. Rather than asking Nagito to sleep without him, it seemed like a better call to make an effort to get to bed at a set time from now on, maybe even start up a nighttime routine for the two of them—

Hajime startled when Nagito bumped his forehead against his.

“Hey, going somewhere? This—” he traced a thumb over Hajime’s jaw, “—is already more than I could ever ask for.” 

Hajime sighed. “Well, I wish you’d ask for a bit more.” He pressed his lips to Nagito’s. “I’ll start working on something today. I’m gonna find a way to help you with this.”

“Hajime is so selfless.” 

He sounded dismissive, not particularly optimistic. Hajime didn’t mind. Nagito liked to insist his problems were unsolvable, but Hajime had proven him wrong before — several times, actually. He’d put Nagito’s lymphoma in remission, and halted the progress of his frontotemporal dementia. The papers he’d written about his methods had gone on to save dozens of lives on the mainland, if Naegi was to be believed. It was still just a drop in the bucket of reparations he owed to humanity at large, but it was a start. Fighting a few nightmares seemed easy by comparison.

Nagito gave him a quick kiss in return. “Not just yet, though. Right?”

He pulled Nagito flush to him and locked his arms around his waist. “Don’t you worry. I’m staying right here.”

________________

Hajime swallowed a bite of eggs as he saw Fuyuhiko storming at him from the other side of the restaurant.

“Hajime.” He slammed his hands on the tabletop in front of him, nearly sloshing Hajime’s pitch-black coffee over the side of his mug, “You can’t keep going on like this.”

“Hey, Fuyuhiko. G‘morning.”

Hajime took a long sip and mentally braced himself as Fuyuhiko slid into the seat across from him. “Is that seriously all you have to say?”

“Well, I figured I’d lead with something easy.” 

“Come on. You look like shit. You haven’t slept in weeks.” Fuyuhiko huffed, gesturing at his face, “And don’t try and say you have! Your eyebags have eyebags.”

Christ. Well, he probably shouldn’t have expected Fuyuhiko to soften the blow. And, given the fact that his hand was trying (and failing) to comb its way through his day-three unwashed hair, honestly, he could have come at Hajime with a whole lot worse.

“I… Okay. You aren’t wrong.”

It had been a month since Nagito had opened up to him about his nightmares, and despite Hajime’s best efforts, nothing about the situation had improved. Nagito was doing a commendable job trying to humor him — he’d been journaling his nightmares every day, attempting to twist their storyline towards a less horrible ending (really impressive work, given what he was writing about). He’d been getting to bed at a consistent time, too, and he hadn’t even made fun of the stupid bottle of lavender spray Hajime had whipped up in some last ditch effort to make their bed as sleep-friendly as humanly possible.

None of it had made a dent in the quality of Nagito’s sleep. His nightmares had only gotten worse. It was par for the course, now, for Nagito to jolt awake two, even three times a night, when he could sleep at all. 

Just a few days ago, he’d been up for a full 72 hours before he’d finally collapsed on one of the loungers beside the pool. When Nekomaru had tried to move him back to his cabin, he’d woken with a shout, violently torn himself out of his hold, and fallen onto the concrete.

In short, things were going badly. Everybody knew it.

The worst part: if Nagito really had finally given in to the insomnia Hajime had been trying so hard to help him fight, he couldn’t even blame him for it. The way Nagito yelled when he was pulled from sleep was haunting. He wasn’t sure how much more of Nagito pretending he wasn’t sobbing into his chest he could take. 

Hajime had been just as restless since this whole ordeal had started. A month ago, he’d started bolting awake every time Nagito so much as rolled over in bed. It had gotten worse recently. Now, night after night, he found himself unable to do much else but watch Nagito sleep — catalog every twitch and turn, every mumbled word and pained expression that led up to the moment he lurched awake and into Hajime’s arms.

He may not have needed to sleep as much as the average person, strictly speaking, but even Hajime had limits. This past week, he could count the number of hours he’d slept on one hand, and it was starting to show. It didn’t help that he had never stopped needing the emotional benefits of a full night of rest. He knew that he’d been less responsive, more irate. Having to deal with him in his current state wasn’t something anyone on the island deserved.

Nagito hated seeing him like this. He hated seeing Nagito like this. Nagito hated the way Hajime hated seeing him like this. 

So, they were at a bit of an impasse. 

Fuyuhiko sighed. “Everybody’s worried, Hajime. You’ve gotta let the rest of us know if there’s something we can do to help out.” He lowered his voice, “This is about Nagito, right?”

“Yeah. It’s Nagito.” Hajime monotoned. He knew he sounded as tired as he looked. Seriously — it was a miracle people hadn’t already been on his case for weeks. “He’s been having nightmares.”

“I figured. He looks just as awful as you.” Fuyuhiko frowned. “And we’ve all heard him screaming. Do you know what’s been bothering him?”

Hajime paused. He wasn’t sure this was his story to tell. Still. Things were looking dire. 

Fuyuhiko had been there. Hajime wasn’t sure if that made what he was about to say better, or ten times worse. 

“I’m only telling you this because I think you’ll understand. Please don’t spread this around.” Hajime took a deep breath, “It’s about the Neo World Program.”

Fuyuhiko laughed. “Which fuckin’ part? That whole thing was nightmare fuel, and your boyfriend sure loved starting fires.” He shook his head, snickering. “Literally.”

He didn't mean it maliciously, he was just stating a fact. It had been over two years since the last of the Remnants had woken up from the simulation, and they’d worked hard ever since to heal the rifts it had cut between them. They generally agreed their time in stasis was something that should stay safely behind them. 

It came up from time to time, in jokes and in therapy, but they made an active effort to keep the tensions Enoshima had stirred up between them dead and buried. For most of them, it was a matter of spite. 

Even so, some scars were still too sensitive to prod at. That was why Hajime made sure to keep his voice quiet. “His suicide.”

Fuyuhiko’s brow raised a fraction. “Oh. Damn.”

“Yeah.” Hajime took a sip of his coffee as Fuyuhiko visibly buffered. 

“That’s… a lot.”

Hajime put a fist over his mouth to stifle a slightly delirious laugh. He’d taken the words right out of his mouth. “It sure is.”

Fuyuhiko shook his head. “Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t catch up with the bastard sooner. I mean, you remember it.”

“I do.” Hajime traced a finger absently along the rim of his mug. “I know we all do.” 

It had been too much to take in all at once. He remembered seeing the spear in his stomach, first. His face, twisted in pain. The duct tape, the knife in his hand, the rope. Then, the smaller wounds, littering every inch of skin Nagito had been able to reach. 

There had been so, so much blood. The smell of copper in the room had been overwhelming. 

Hajime had wanted to vomit. Instead, he had investigated the corpse in front of him, and sent the world’s last piece of Chiaki Nanami to her death. 

After the trial, he hadn’t slept. He hadn’t cried, either. He’d only managed to stare at the ceiling of his cabin. He’d never felt so empty.

Well — Hajime Hinata had never felt so empty. It was funny, in retrospect. That night, he’d proven to himself that despair was completely, utterly banal. How pointless. How boring. 

Fuyuhiko’s brows were drawn. “Still, it’s sort of strange. Knowing that it hurt him, too.” He chuckled to himself. “Beyond, you know. All the stab wounds.”

Hajime shook his head. “I don’t think he realized, either.”

“He wanted us gone pretty bad, didn’t he?” Fuyuhiko paused. He glanced to the side for a long moment, eyes narrowed and jaw set. 

Then, he laced his hands in front of him on the tabletop and turned to face Hajime. “We’ve all done terrible things. That’s no secret. What’s past is past, nutjob murder-suicides included. What I’m sayin’ is, that doesn’t change a thing. If there’s anything I can do to help, ask away. I know everybody feels the same.” He nodded resolutely. “We care about the both of you.”

Hajime smiled. He was surprised by how easy it was, given how heavy his whole face felt. “Thanks, Fuyuhiko. It means a lot, really.”

Fuyuhiko leaned in, expectant. “So? How about it?” 

Hajime chewed his lip. “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do.” 

God. He was talking exactly like Nagito now. 

Fuyuhiko was undeterred. “Come on! There’s gotta be something. I can get Sonia, Kazuichi, and Akane in on it, too. I mean, we were all there! Maybe we can sit down with him, talk it out? If he has a guilty conscience, he should know all of that’s water under the bridge.”

Hajime laughed. “I can’t see that ending well.” He sighed. “Really, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t even know if Nagito knows what’s bothering him, right now.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.” Fuyuhiko groaned, “He can’t be that dense.”

The thing was, Nagito really could be that dense. 

Well, maybe that was unfair. The situation wasn’t exactly straightforward. If Fuyuhiko thought he could pin down what was going on inside Nagito’s head, he was leaps and bounds ahead of Hajime.

He’d learned that with Nagito, his first guess as to why he thought or did anything was rarely anywhere close to the truth. There was definitely a reason these nightmares had taken two years to surface, and a reason they’d decided to surface now. Nowadays, he trusted his boyfriend to at least try to communicate those reasons to him, if he could. The trouble was, Nagito being Nagito, any good explanation was probably tangled up in a web of emotional damage thick enough to keep even the most self-aware observer blind to it. 

Self-awareness wasn't really one of Nagito’s strengths. Hajime said as much. “I think that Nagito is… complicated.”

“I think you’re too in love with the bastard for your own good.” Fuyuhiko rolled his good eye. “At least he loves you, too. If anyone can get through that thick skull of his, it’s you.” Fuyuhiko paused, and Hajime noted color rising on his cheeks. He wondered where Peko was this morning. “He thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread, you know that?”

“I do,” Hajime let out a laugh, fidgeting with his shirt collar, “I really don’t deserve it.”

Fuyuhiko scoffed. “Give yourself some credit. Someone who doesn’t deserve it wouldn’t look the way you do right now. I bet my ass you’re sleeping even less than he is, aren’t you?”

He was practically glaring at him. Hajime swallowed, averting his eyes. “Ehh, I wouldn’t say that…”

“You’re worried sick. Admit it.”

Hajime sighed, resting his face against his fist. “Of course I am.” He shook his head. “I mean, it’s Nagito.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. You take good care of him.” Fuyuhiko’s voice had lost all of its edge. “He’s lucky to have you.”

“I’m lucky to have him, too.” Hajime pressed his fingers to his eyelids, willing the sleep to leave them. “I just do what I can. He’s worth it.”

“And that,” Fuyuhiko slapped his hand on the tabletop, “is why I’m sure you’ll figure this out.” He leveled a look at Hajime. “But also, I’m being serious. The second you think the rest of us could help out, you call us.”

Hajime’s lips quirked up. He gave Fuyuhiko a small salute. “Got it.”

“Good. You better.”

He pushed out his chair and got to his feet. Hajime watched him walk away. He hoped Fuyuhiko hadn’t noticed the way his face had fallen just before he’d turned to leave.

________________

Hajime wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he came back to his cabin after work that afternoon. An empty room, most likely. If he was lucky, Nagito reading on their couch. 

He wouldn’t have put money on finding his boyfriend perched at the edge of their bed, a coil of rope in his lap and an unsheathed survival knife tucked neatly inside it. Which, of course, was exactly what he was looking at right now.

“Nagito, uh… What’s all that for?”

Nagito leaned towards him with a heated look in his (very bloodshot, heavily purple-rimmed) eyes. “I think you know.”

Ah! So this was a sex thing.

Hajime took a moment to appreciate the fact that the scene in front of him probably would have made him freeze up and ‘oh fuck no’ his way out of his room a year ago. Instead, Hajime loosened his tie and tossed it to the floor. None of this was exactly new to their bedroom, lately.

“Ha… you just took me off guard.” Hajime paused. “Hey, wait. It’s four in the afternoon. Weren’t you planning to work on something with Sonia today?”

Nagito pushed the rope and knife to his side as Hajime made his way over to the bed. “We finished up early! You’ll find that all of the library’s books are now officially logged in a systematized catalog.” Nagito stood to meet him. “It gave me time to stop by the market and pick up a few things, to surprise you.”

Hajime wrapped his arms around Nagito’s waist and pulled him in for a kiss. He felt the other smile into it, humming contentedly as he let Hajime set their pace. After a minute, he felt the cold palms of Nagito’s hands — one flesh, one metal — slip under the hem of his shirt, feeling up his stomach, his chest. 

Hajime pulled away before he could lose his faculties completely. Nagito had a way of interfering with his better judgment even on his sharpest days. As most of the island could attest, Hajime hadn’t had one of those in weeks. 

“Well, you won’t see me complaining. But, before we start…” Hajime took a pointed look at the items sprawled out on the bedspread behind them, “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Nagito slipped his hands out from under his shirt. He placed a single palm over Hajime’s clothed chest, gently pressing Hajime back against the bed. “Ah, that’s the thing. Let’s sit down.”

His expression had gone plastic. Hajime found that Nagito’s default smile was as unreadable as it ever had been. He was almost offended — it had been ages since he’d been on the receiving end of such a total freeze-out. 

Regardless, he followed Nagito’s lead, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. “Uh, okay. So, something new then?”

Nagito joined him. His good hand was fidgeting absently with one end of the rope coil set to his side. That gave him pause — Nagito didn’t get jittery unless something was very, very wrong.

Nagito hummed. “Not entirely. In some ways, yes.” He met Hajime’s eyes, hands balled in his lap. “I’d like you to use this rope to tie me to the bed, headboard and footboard, and use this knife on my thighs. My bicep as well.”

Hajime froze. He let out a strained laugh. “Oh! Yeah, that’s new!”

It took a lot to surprise him, nowadays — the talents in his head made it almost impossible to catch him off guard. Even so, Nagito Komaeda had the damndest way of managing anyway. 

They both knew what he was getting at. As much as Hajime had been thinking about it this past month, Nagito bringing it up now, mid-boner, felt like a suckerpunch to the gut.

Hajime had never been very good at staying down when the world kicked him. Nagito had accused him of wanting to be a protagonist, once, and he hadn’t exactly been wrong about that. Hajime had receipts on Hope’s Peak letterhead: Izuru Kamukura wouldn’t have existed without his teenage self’s thick-headed insistence he could be better than he was. 

That very same blind ambition had pushed him through Monokuma’s class trials. It had kept his friends alive, and prevented the second coming of Junko Enoshima. 

It wasn’t all bad, it just was. Hajime liked feeling capable.  

In the wake of the end of the world, Hajime had learned that there were things he couldn’t fight. If warehouse fires and tetris blocks had given him his first taste of true powerlessness, the weeks after he woke up from the program, Hajime found himself shoveling it down daily. Some mistakes couldn’t be undone.

For all his talk about creating a better future, he sometimes worried that if he ever stopped working, he’d never convince himself to start again. There was no point.

He’d done an alright job keeping it under wraps, but it had taken Hajime time to actually believe the message he preached day in and day out: to accept his reality, and turn that hopeless feeling into something productive. 

There were countless people he’d never get the chance to know, but he did get the chance to know Nagito. He would never have his old body back, but he could use his new talents to make a difference in the world. He had the chance to atone. He lived a good life now, even if it had come at too high a cost. The pain he felt about that was a good thing. It pushed him forward, made him better. It was a hairclip he could carry around in his pocket.

Now, though, he could feel the emptiness creeping back in. His body wasn’t having it. Maybe it was silly to be scared of a feeling, but here he was: pulse ratcheting and awareness gone fuzzy, stuck in limbo while his brain reacted to its own thoughts like an animal caught in a snare.

The worst part about it was the Ultimate Therapist’s need to narrate what was happening to him in real time. Because, as it turned out, knowing he was having a trauma response did absolutely nothing to help Hajime cope with it.

He jumped when Nagito set a hand on his thigh. “Ah—” Hajime’s vision came back into focus. Nagito’s face was close to his own, his eyes wide. “It was presumptuous of me to spring this on you, I’m afraid I’m not thinking straight, and—”

Hajime managed to take a breath. The past was the past. Even if he lost control, he’d be fine. He’d never been worthless. At his worst, his friends still thought he mattered.

He trusted Nagito. Nagito clearly trusted him, too, if he was willing to bring this idea up to him. Hajime wasn’t about to betray that.

Hajime placed a hand over Nagito’s. “No, no. Sorry, I’m the one who isn’t thinking straight. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

Nagito scrutinized him. “Hajime, I don’t think that’s true. You haven’t been alright for weeks. It’s worrying me.”

He looked so earnest that Hajime laughed in spite of himself. “You’re one to talk. Nagito, you’ve been scaring me lately. Not you— I mean,” Hajime beat a quick retreat. After the outburst he’d just had, the last thing he needed was Nagito thinking he’d caused it. “I don’t like seeing you hurt. I really don’t. I just want to help, but everything…” 

Hajime forced back the end of that thought. He clenched his fingers around Nagito’s. “I’m not giving up. I’m not.”

Nagito seemed caught off guard for a moment. Hajime was pleased that his surprise didn’t last as long as it used to. He quickly gathered his bearings. “That’s the thing. I’ve been reflecting, and I really think that this might help.”

“The knife thing, you mean?” Hajime spared a glance at the ‘supplies’ Nagito had left on the bedspread behind them.

Strangely enough, he suspected he knew where Nagito might be going with this. 

Even stranger, he was in no rush to shut it down.

Nagito continued. “The intention of image rehearsal therapy is to help a patient change the narrative of their nightmares, to overwrite the things that make them feel dangerous with associations a patient prefers, right? The journaling isn’t working, Hajime,” he pulled his legs up beneath him on the bed, kneeling and facing Hajime completely, now, “but I’ve come up with something I’d like to associate all of this with that I think we’d both prefer.”

“You mean…”

Nagito crept forward until he was practically in his lap. He braced his arms on Hajime’s shoulders. “Well, we both like it when you tie me up and fuck me.”

“Ha… I can’t argue with that.”

“And we enjoy using a knife from time to time.” He traced a finger along his jaw. Hajime’s face was suddenly, inexplicably scorching. 

“Also true…”

Nagito backed down, settling in his own space on the mattress. “We’d just be thinking about something different when we do it, this time. I think it might really work.” 

Nagito’s teasing edge was gone as quickly as it came. “I don’t bring this up lightly. I’ve been thinking this plan through for days, and I’ve decided it’s something I want to try. I understand if you need some time—”

Hajime cut him off. “No. I want to try it, too.”

“Really?” Nagito’s eyes went wide. “That’s wonderful!”

Hajime lagged for a moment. For all that the words had come out of his own mouth, he hadn’t really expected to hear them either. 

“I…” he chewed at his lip, “You’re not just doing this for me, right? Because I can’t sleep?”

Nagito’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Ah. I understand why you might think that,” he hummed, resting his hand on his chin, “but no. I want to leave this behind. I’m tired, Hajime.” 

It didn’t take any special talent to read the look in his eyes, to recognize that he didn’t just mean it in a physical sense. Hajime understood. 

He crawled towards Hajime on the bed. “Besides,” he pushed Hajime back onto the mattress, moving to straddle his torso. Hajime laughed as Nagito leaned down, hair tickling his neck. “Don’t you think it’ll be fun?”

“Of course it will,” he pulled Nagito one last inch closer, stealing a kiss, “You’re always fun.”

“I—” Hajime watched his boyfriend swallow at least three self-deprecating comments before finishing his thought. They were working on that. “...That’s very kind of you to say.”

Hajime’s only response to that, of course, was to kiss Nagito again, and again for good measure. By the time he’d remembered they were still in the middle of a serious conversation, both of them were breathing heavy, their shirts rucked up and faces flushed. 

“One more thing.” Hajime pulled Nagito down next to him on the bed, “I don’t want to stab you. I’ll cut you, but nothing too deep. I won’t cause serious damage. And I’m not touching your hand.”

Nagito nodded. “That’s fine. So long as it’s this knife—” he glanced to his side at the survival knife he’d brought from the market: seven inches of brutal steel, serrated near the base, sharpened to a razor-fine edge all along its length. The resemblance it bore to the blade Nagito had used in the simulation was striking.

Then, he met Hajime’s eyes. “So long as it’s you.”

He continued. “Also, I’d prefer if we didn’t use duct tape. I’d like to be able to kiss you, if that’s alright.”

Hajime nodded immediately. “Of course it’s alright. Anything you want, we’ll do. Now come here.” He circled his arms around Nagito. “We can try it tomorrow, yeah?”

“Aha… ha…” Nagito buried his face in his neck. “I really am so lucky…”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He stroked the back of his boyfriend’s head with his hand. For a long moment, they stayed like that, the room quiet save for the steady sound of breathing. 

“Hey, Nagito?” Hajime broke their silence. “You know that I love you, yeah?”

He hummed. “Hajime says the funniest things sometimes.” Nagito inhaled deeply, relaxing against him. “I do.”

Hajime didn’t need him to say it back. The smile in his voice was a dead giveaway.

When Hajime turned the lights out, it was five in the afternoon. They were both fully dressed — Nagito hadn’t even bothered to peel off his skinny jeans. 

They knocked out cold in minutes. For the first time in weeks, they both slept through the night.

________________

As he finished securing the last of Nagito’s limbs, Hajime finally let himself cave to the sense of unease that had been tailing him since that morning.

“Are you…”  He huffed. Why was forming sentences so goddamn hard? “Are you still feeling good about this?”

Nagito flexed his left foot, then his right, before shooting Hajime a smile. “Yes! You did an excellent job, there’s hardly any give!”

Hajime rolled his eyes. He could’ve told him that himself — the Ultimate Sailor talent made damn sure of it, just like always. But that was beside the point. “You know what I mean. Now that you’re—” he gestured broadly to the ropes binding Nagito to their bed, “You know. Do you, uh. Do you still want to do this?”

It felt a little silly to ask — he was still in his boxers, but Nagito had stripped before they’d gotten started, and his excitement had been visible ever since. Still, he didn’t want to be overly presumptuous. That sort of thing screwed you when it came to Nagito. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that he and his dick were on totally separate pages. 

Nagito nodded. “I do.” His eyes widened. “Are you having second thoughts? It’s alright if you are. I wouldn’t want to pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to, you know.”

And that was the crux of the issue, wasn’t it? Hajime sighed. “I… Right back at you, I guess. I just don’t want you to regret this. Or…” he paused, parsing his words. That was true, one hundred percent, but it was more than that. “I guess it’s that, well, I don’t want to be the reason you regret this.”

“Hmm…” Nagito sounded remarkably contemplative, boner considered. “Do you trust me, Hajime?”

“Huh?”

Nagito repeated himself. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do.” Hajime didn’t need to think about his answer. 

Nagito looked him dead in the eye. “Then I need you to trust me now. I’ll tell you if anything is too much. And if this doesn’t work out, I need you to trust that I won’t hold you responsible for that.” He sounded resolute. “I want this. I really do. Do you want it too?”

Hajime bit the inside of his lip. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t incredibly turned on. It had been a battle to stay focused all day — nerves and sleep deprivation weren’t the only reasons Naegi had needed to repeat their itinerary twice over on their conference call that morning. And if Nagito was so sure…

“I… I do.”

“Well then.” Nagito took a breathy inhale, and Hajime felt the last of his nerves die in real time. “I want you, Hajime. Let me show you how much?”

“You’ve really done a number on me, you know that?” Hajime climbed up on the bed, “First. Safeword?”

“Monomi.”

They’d picked it out together early on in their relationship: a word that would never, ever come up in bed organically. The Ultimate Erection Killer, by all metrics.

“You got it. Uh, where were we again?” Hajime straddled his torso, hands braced on Nagito’s chest. “That’s right.”

Hajime leaned down to kiss his neck, latching onto the soft skin just beneath his ear. Nagito’s neck flexed into the path of his teeth as he took his time biting his way down, from the hard line of Nagito’s jaw, slowly past his jugular, to the dip of his clavicle. 

Nagito’s throat bobbed as he clenched his teeth, sighing under Hajime’s careful attention. That was good. Almost what he wanted. He gave Nagito’s neck a particularly rough bite, rolling his skin between his incisors.

He let out an open-mouthed moan. “Ah! Ah… Too good, Hajime…”

Hajime hummed against Nagito’s throat before biting down a second time, just as hard, and earning another moan, twice as loud. He followed that up with a third bite in quick succession. Nagito let out a cracked sob.

Hajime gently sucked at the indents he’d left on Nagito’s neck, lingering near his carotid long enough to read his heart rate (98 BPM, well within normal range for an adult man engaging in sexual foreplay). Still, his whole body was rigid. That was unusual for him.

He scooted back until he sat comfortably between Nagito’s spread-eagle thighs. He really did make a ridiculously pretty sight — hair splayed out, face flushed, lips parted as he breathed heavy under him. Hajime couldn’t help the way he throbbed in his boxers. 

Already, he could see blister-pink chafe marks forming under the rope around Nagito’s wrist. He slipped a hand beneath the restraint. Nagito keened.

Hajime rubbed at the freshly breaking skin with his thumb. “I know you want to get to the main event, but you’re not quite where I want you yet. You can be patient for me, right?”

It was true. Typically, when Nagito looked like this (that is, well on track to totally debauched) the state of his body matched. Nagito was turned on, sure, but Hajime couldn’t afford to ignore how tense he was, too. 

The why here was a no-brainer. It was weirdly reassuring to know that they were both nervous about what was up next. Nagito was showing his real hand, and it wasn’t too different from his own.

But Hajime wasn’t the one tied up here. It was his job to help with that.

Nagito nodded. “Mhm…”

“Good.” He leaned forward and planted a kiss on Nagito’s lips, “You’re a little tense. I’m gonna take care of that. No cumming, though. Tell me when you get close.”

Hajime waited for his affirmative nod before he braced his hands on either side of Nagito’s torso, bent down, and took his boyfriend’s cock in his mouth. The taste was musky on his tongue, salty with precum and sweat. He swirled his tongue around the head, once, twice, then dipped down, taking it to the base. 

Nagito let out a gasp above him. Hajime hollowed his cheeks and ran his tongue up the underside as he pulled back, wrenching another cry from Nagito.

He wouldn’t be doing this for long, which was unfortunate, because sucking his boyfriend off was something he really liked to do. Nagito was always loud — once Hajime got him going, he never bothered to bite back the sounds he made. It was almost excessive, to the point that Hajime sometimes wondered if he was faking. 

But Hajime could read his body like a textbook, and the facts said otherwise. When his mouth was on Nagito, it never took long for him to become a drooling mess. His blown out eyes and stuttering hips proved that all the panting and whining really was Nagito’s honest-to-god truth.

That said, Nagito was also easy. Really easy. As Hajime bobbed down to his base again, burying his nose in soft pubic hair, Nagito’s body twisted. He gasped.

“Ah, ahh— Hajime, wait, wait! If you don’t stop, I’ll—”

Hajime pulled back in half a second, all suction dropped. He wiped a spare string of saliva from his lips with the back of his hand. Beneath him, Nagito had fallen slack into the mattress. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His eyes were unfocused. 

Mission accomplished.

“You’re doing great.” He stroked Nagito’s hair as he caught his breath. “Are you ready for more?”

Nagito nodded enthusiastically, leaning into his touch. Hajime gave his cheek a light slap.

“None of that. I want to hear you say it.”

Nagito moaned, pupils dilating to twice their usual size as he chased Hajime’s fingers with his tongue. He giggled when Hajime yanked them away. 

Hajime fixed him with a serious look, because this was serious business (that, and he knew his attempts at playing strict drove Nagito wild). 

Nagito sobered up. He still looked dazed, but the heat in his eyes was clear and directed. 

“Yes, Hajime. I’m ready for more.”

“Good.” Hajime bent forward and kissed him, slow and deep. “I’ll grab the knife.”

He reached over to their bedside table and grabbed their freshly sanitized survival knife from its place next to their bottle of lube and first aid kit. They’d already swapped out the good sheets on their bed with the set they reserved exclusively for… messier… activities, and placed an extra towel underneath Nagito to give those sheets at least some chance of surviving until their next use. 

Really, all that was left for them to do was start.

He turned the knife over in his hand and took a deep breath. Below him, he could hear Nagito do the same. He looked down to see his boyfriend staring up at him, anticipation in his eyes. He didn’t break eye contact as Hajime placed a hand to the side of his neck. 120 BPM. 

He leaned down and pressed his lips to Nagito’s. He let them linger. 

When he pulled away and sat back up, Nagito met his eyes again. “Thank you, Hajime.”

“Of course,” he brushed a stray strand of hair away from Nagito’s face, “Always.”

He lined the blade up against Nagito’s upper left thigh, pressed down, and dragged.

Immediately, Nagito squeezed his eyes shut and threw his head back against his pillow, letting out a choked-off, pleasured sound. Hajime watched blood well up inside the shallow cut he’d made — beads of red that spilled over the lip of Nagito’s sliced skin and dripped their way down his inner thigh.

Hajime lined up the knife again, half an inch below his first cut, and pressed down. Nagito bit his lip and arched his back as he pulled the length of the blade across.

He reached up to cup Nagito's face in his free hand. “You’re doing such a good job.” 

Nagito whimpered in response. 

Using the serrated base of the blade, Hajime opened another gash. Nagito gasped, his neck pressed hard into his pillow and eyes rolled back. Hajime cut again in quick succession, slicing closer to the skin of Nagito’s inner thigh.

“H-Hajime!” Nagito cried out, limbs flexing against his restraints. His mouth gaped slightly as he sucked in air. Chest heaving, his head lolled to the side, exposing his freshly bruised neck. 

Hajime’s own handiwork. He wasn’t sure how much more turned on he could get. 

Blood continued to spill from Nagito’s cuts, pooling up and intercepting older trails of rust-red as they criss-crossed their way down to the bed. Hajime drew two fingers through the mess, coating them up to his second knuckle in wet crimson. 

He raised them to Nagito’s face. “Suck.” 

Nagito eagerly parted his lips to comply, lapping at Hajime’s fingers like a man starved. He gagged as Hajime pressed them to the back of his throat before pulling them out, no trace of blood remaining.

Nagito was looking up at him like he hung all the stars in the sky. Hajime was sure that if he had a mirror, he’d find his own expression wasn’t much different. 

He drew the knife diagonally across the previous gashes he’d made. Nagito let out a sob, thrashing underneath Hajime as he pulled it through the gore. He was sweaty, now, forehead pale against the red of his cheeks, the tips of his ears. There were tears in his eyes.

His cock was leaking profusely, its usual pale pink almost purple now. Hajime took it in his hand and squeezed near the base, just too tight to be comfortable. Keeping his hold firm, he buried his face in Nagito’s neck, peppering the mottled skin with bites, savoring the noises Nagito made above him.

He dropped his grip and sat back up. “You’re doing good. So good. Are you ready for your right leg?”

Nagito let out a groan. That was probably a yes, but again. This was serious business. He gave Nagito’s face another slap, harder this time.

“No. Use your words.”

Nagito whined, eyes squeezed shut. “Yes, Hajime. Please.”

“Please, what?” Hajime pressed the very tip of the knife into one of the open cuts, giving it a twist.

Nagito let out a sound that was half scream, half moan. He panted, reflexive tears dripping down his face, “Please cut me!”

This was the sort of thing Nagito lived for. It had taken a little while for Hajime to get the hang of how to do the whole dominance and submission bit exactly how Nagito liked it, but it had been worth the effort. Nagito’s face right now — sweat-slick and flushed, twisted in pleasure — made any embarrassment Hajime had felt from past fuck-ups in bed feel petty.

He leaned down to kiss his forehead. “You got it.” 

Nagito’s back arched as Hajime delivered two cuts back to back on top of his right thigh. He lined up the knife for another slice. He pressed down, the entirety of the blade breaking skin at once, before he dragged the sharp edge out and through.

“Hinata-kun!” Nagito gasped for air. “Hinata-kun, please—”

Huh?

Nagito let out another sob. “Hinata-kun, ah, please, please…”

No, Hajime had heard that correctly. Hinata-kun. Nagito hadn’t called him by his surname in at least a year, and it had been even longer since he’d heard it from his boyfriend’s mouth with an honorific attached. Since the Neo World Program, just about.

He paused. One look in Nagito’s hazy eyes told him that he was halfway gone — foggy, euphoric, and left entirely in Hajime’s hands. Alone, that was no cause for concern. Hinata-kun, though, was a bit of a red flag. It was almost like Nagito’s sense of time had gone fuzzy…

Oh!

He laughed to himself. He couldn’t remember the last time his boyfriend had been wrong about anything like this. It seemed funny in retrospect to have ever doubted his plan would work exactly as he intended it to, down to a tee. Better, even.

Now, it was just up to Hajime to carry it through. He needed to make this good for Nagito. There was no room for error.

He delivered another cut, earned another scream, and kissed it straight off Nagito’s lips. Nagito panted into his mouth, swapping humid breath with his own. It was less of a kiss than a plea: Hajime’s clumsy attempt to merge them as close to a single body as they could possibly get, so that Nagito would never get the taste of him out of his mouth.

He stayed there as he sliced into Nagito’s right thigh a fifth time, another diagonal cut. He groaned as Nagito bit into his lip, hard. His boyfriend’s cock twitched against his leg, hot and wanting. Hajime felt damn near ready to burst himself. 

He couldn’t afford to be impatient, but good fucking lord. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to stay sane under conditions like this: Nagito spread out beneath him, blissed out and completely his to wreck.

He placed his hand over the mess of cuts on Nagito’s right thigh as he pushed himself into an upright position, cupping Nagito’s face in his hand.

“You’re amazing, Nagito. Just a little more.” He rubbed his thumb against his boyfriend’s cheek. “You can handle that, right?”

Nagito nodded quickly, smearing his face with red. His face relaxed into a groggy smile, his eyes fluttering shut. 

“Good,” Hajime murmured, “You’re almost there.”

He pressed down on Nagito’s elbow with his free hand to keep it from jerking. His boyfriend’s arms were significantly skinnier than his thighs, meaning the depth of these lacerations really mattered. Fortunately, he could let the Ultimate Surgeon guide his hand.

He ran the flat of the knife teasingly across Nagito’s right bicep before flipping it and pressing down, breaking skin. The gash bubbled up red. Nagito let out an open-mouthed whine, trying and failing to flinch from under Hajime’s hold on his forearm.

Hajime placed a second cut, and a third — meticulous, controlled. Beneath him, Nagito was wide eyed and slack jawed, moaning on every exhale.

“Hinata-kun, ah, please don’t—!”

It struck Hajime that the last time Nagito had done this (and worse) he’d had one more arm than he did now. His plot wouldn’t have worked, otherwise. He needed one arm to hold the spear tight, the other to turn his body into a crime scene that would cast suspicion on everyone but him. 

(Because really, who could possibly stomach doing all that to themself?)

It had always been a hard thought for Hajime to stomach: that Nagito had held himself — had held all of them — in contempt ravenous enough to propel his arm through each and every stab wound. He’d been so sure that Nagito’s final breath of poisoned air had been taken with vindicated spite.

But today, lost in the past, Nagito was calling out for someone. He was calling out for Hinata-kun, not Hajime.

Suddenly, he stopped thrashing. He looked at Hajime with startling lucidity, fear in his eyes. 

“Hinata-kun. Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

Now that I’m on the verge of death, I’ve finally realized what I wanted all along: somebody’s love.

Nagito had died hating all of them. He’d died hating himself. More importantly, though, he’d died alone.

“I won’t, I promise. I’m staying,” Hajime kissed him once, twice. “I’m here.”

Nagito let out a loud sob. Hajime brushed a tear from his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Hajime was going to make these final cuts count. He reached down and wrapped a hand around his boyfriend’s cock, stroking it as a litany of assurances fell from his lips — I’m here, I’m right here, I love you, I’m here — until his words no longer felt like words and his breathing had gone ragged. 

Nagito couldn’t have done this by himself, and not just because he was short an arm. Rewriting that day would take two bodies. It seemed so obvious now. It only made sense that Hajime would be his second.

Nagito writhed underneath him as Hajime jerked him off, fast and rough, just how he liked it. He used his free hand to angle the survival knife against Nagito’s bicep and slice another gash.

He could tell that Nagito was about to cum when his vocalizations petered out, when his body tensed up and his mouth fell open in a breathless, wordless scream. Hajime increased his grip, moved his wrist like his life depended on it. As Nagito came on his stomach, Hajime delivered his final cut, one last diagonal across his bicep. Hajime committed the choked-off sound he made to memory. 

Hajime stroked him through his orgasm, only slowing when Nagito stilled entirely, lying limp against the mattress as he caught his breath. His hair was wild — some plastered to his forehead, the rest frizzy and matted up against his pillow. His mouth stayed slightly parted as he sucked in air, blinking his way back into the present. 

Nagito's body was more dirty than clean — his skin streaked in blood, cum, or both. A little string of drool was actively making its way down his chin, adding spit to the list of bodily fluids lining their sex towel, and their underlying sex sheets.

It took all of ten seconds for Nagito to recover. “Hajime. Fuck me. Please.”

Hajime might have laughed at how frantic he sounded if he wasn’t the exact same level of desperate. He was out of his boxers in half a second flat, spreading lube over his fingers by the next. 

Working Nagito open was a special kind of torture — Nagito couldn’t seem to get Hajime inside him fast enough, and holding off against his begging was something Hajime was just past too horny to manage. Probably too quickly, Hajime found himself four fingers deep in his boyfriend, managing the herculean feat of not surrendering to Nagito’s frenzied begging for his dick as he ground himself down on Hajime’s fingers as far as his restraints would allow.

It was moments like these that Hajime thanked the scientists at Hope’s Peak for whatever freak shit they’d been on when they’d surgically altered his body. Apparently, their vision for the Ultimate Hope had a long ejaculation latency and a quick refractory period — or, in human terms, he could hold out on cumming longer and come back for more quicker. It actually worked out pretty great for Hajime, seeing as his boyfriend was an insatiable sex demon. 

Without their help, Hajime probably would’ve come untouched half an hour ago. He was running that risk anyway, even now. Nagito’s voice went straight to his cock every time — something he knew and exploited to no end, especially when he wanted Hajime to hurry up and fuck him.

Hajime removed his fingers, prompting a long whine from Nagito, cut off when he heard the lube bottle click. Hajime smeared the stuff over his cock and lined up against Nagito’s entrance. He pushed in, and— oh, oh fuck, fucking god, that felt good—!

Hajime grit his teeth and groaned as he bottomed out. He sucked in a breath, exhaled with a puff.

When it came to this, Nagito didn’t do ‘slow.’ As soon as he could manage, Hajime pulled back and slammed into him, earning himself a wet, contented sob. He fucked into Nagito as hard and fast as his own stamina would allow, only holding his thrusts for the sake of denial, to make Nagito’s toes curl and fist clench in the type of frustration that would make him cum twice as hard later.

Nagito’s second climax was violent. Jerking against the ropes, Nagito came completely dry, crying out as Hajime fucked him through the last of his full-body spasms. 

Sweat dripped from his forehead. His thighs burned from exertion. Hajime absolutely refused to drop pace. 

Things went a little fuzzy from there. He knew that he managed to eke one more orgasm out of Nagito before the end of the night, if the angry chafing under Nagito’s wrist restraint was anything to go by. By the time he finally came inside his boyfriend, Nagito was past coherent. The only word he could manage was Hajime’s given name — not that Hajime was any more lucid, seeing as he didn’t have a single thought in the world besides how he could make Nagito scream it louder.

As he came down from his high, Hajime dropped down next to Nagito on the mattress, right in the trapezoid of open space provided by his absent limb. 

“I’ll cut you loose. Just give me one sec, okay?”

Nagito hummed above him. It would probably take him a few minutes to get his language back.

As soon as Hajime could manage, he sat up and used the knife to cut Nagito’s wrist and ankles free. He tossed the fraying lengths of rope down to the carpet — he would’ve untied them the slow way if he had the energy, but frankly, Hajime could barely even manage to hold the knife. He grabbed a bottle of water and a spare towel from their bedside table. He wet the cloth before beginning to wipe down Nagito’s skin in small circular motions, dabbing over his still-leaking cuts. Tired as he was, Nagito would hate it if he woke up tomorrow covered in grime.

When Nagito’s body was mostly free of cum, sweat, and gore, Hajime helped him prop up on his side before holding the rest of the bottle to his lips, encouraging him to drink. Hajime chugged what remained before slumping onto the bed. He curled around Nagito, planting a kiss on the back of his neck. Nagito adjusted against his chest with a soft sigh. 

In the morning, there would be cleaning to do, wounds to bandage. Now though, they were both exhausted. 

Hajime fell asleep to the sound of Nagito’s breathing, calm and even. For just a few hours, everything could wait.

________________

Hajime woke up slowly the next morning, blinking sleep from his eyes. Sun shone through their curtained window. As Nagito stretched in his arms, Hajime heard him bite back a wince.

“Hey, hey. Take it easy. We still haven’t done your first aid.”

Nagito, still pliant from sleep and good sex, didn’t protest as Hajime helped him detach their towel and sheets from where they’d stuck to his fresh scabs. He walked him over to the shower, where they both took a much-needed rinse. Hajime rubbed him down under the warm stream of water, a sudsy washcloth working to ease caked-on blood off his skin and down the drain.

Hajime left his boyfriend to wash his hair as he toweled off, slid on a pair of sweatpants, and went to change their sheets. After making their bed anew and tossing their used sheets in a pile on the floor, he laid two more of their heavy-duty, sacrificial sex towels out over their pillows and comforter. 

(If he was being honest, they probably had just as many sheets and towels set aside for sex as they did good linens, which was all the more reason to stay on top of using them. It would be kind of mortifying if the balance tipped.)

By the time Nagito came back into the room, hair dripping over his bare skin, Hajime had laid out a mini-medic station at the foot of their bed.

“I don’t know why you always insist on doing this. I really don’t need it.”

Hajime rolled his eyes. “You do, actually. And I want to. So, come sit down and let me patch you up.”

Nagito’s lip quirked. “If Hajime insists.”

Nagito leaned back against his towel-covered pillow, and Hajime got to work. Kneeling on the mattress, he evaluated which of Nagito’s lacerations were in need of steri-strips and applied them liberally, carefully tugging shut the edges of Nagito’s deeper cuts. He used his finger to dab a small amount of antibiotic ointment over each of his wounds before wrapping them in sterile gauze. The two fell into a comfortable quiet as Hajime zeroed in on the task at hand. 

As Hajime finished up on Nagito's right leg, securing his bandage with a strip of medical tape, Nagito broke their silence.

“You know, when you first woke me up, I spent months wishing all of us were dead.”

Hajime stopped short. He looked up to find Nagito staring down at him blankly.

“I never acted on it, of course, even though there was a part of me that felt like I should. I had no room to judge the others for their actions. We all did awful things, and I was no different. That was reality. Besides—” he laughed to himself, “I knew I wouldn’t last long. The cancer would deal with me, and I didn’t even need to lift a finger.”

Nagito paused for a moment, staring somewhere above Hajime’s head. “You changed that. You changed everything."

He continued. “What I did in the simulation… It was something I needed to do. It was the only good thing I’d ever done in my worthless, pathetic life. It hurt because I meant to make it hurt. We all needed to be punished. That was the only way hope could shine.

“I really believed that, with all my heart.” Nagito spoke through gritted teeth. Then, he sighed. His voice went quiet. “You convinced me otherwise.”

“Before you, I was always alone. I never wanted that, though. I never wanted to die with nobody by my side.”

Hajime placed a steadying hand on his shin. He thought about Nagito, freshly fifteen, being told his body might not last the year. He remembered swirling strawberry patterns, and words he understood but chose not to believe. 

Nothing would have changed if Hajime hadn’t walked away that day. From the moment he’d stepped foot in the funhouse, Nagito finding their student profiles had been a foregone conclusion. Enoshima’s AI was vicious. There was no way he would’ve been allowed to reach an understanding with Nagito, back then.

Still…

They all had regrets. What really mattered was that Hajime was here now. He didn’t interrupt. 

“I think I understand the nightmares, why they're coming now. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go back to thinking that’s the sort of death I deserve.” Nagito pressed a hand over his eyes. He sucked in a breath, voice wobbling. “I don’t want to die, Hajime.”

“Hey, hey.” Hajime was up quick, wrapping his arms around Nagito’s shoulders, bandages abandoned. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

“I know you do.” Nagito sniffled, “Is it wrong that that still terrifies me?”

“No.” Hajime wrapped a hand around the back of Nagito’s head, holding him tighter, “Nothing you feel is wrong.” 

They sat there for a moment, Nagito tucked into the crook of his neck. Hajime massaged circles into his scalp, mussing up his damp, post-shower hair. 

After a long, silent minute had passed, Nagito removed his face from Hajime’s shoulder. He swallowed thickly. “I’m scared.”

“I am too.” Hajime rubbed a thumb against his cheek, swiping away an errant tear. “But not of this. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll make it through anything that gets thrown at us. Every single nightmare.” He took Nagito’s hand in his, squeezing it tight. “I'm going to spend my whole life proving that to you, if you’ll let me.”

Nagito looked at him with wide, startled eyes. “The things you say…” Hajime could feel his hand trembling where it was linked with his own. Even so, his grip on Hajime was firm. His words, too. “I love you, Hajime Hinata. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Hajime smiled. Saying it never got old. Sure, it was something he lived, but Nagito deserved to hear it, too.

He got up on his knees. “Now, are you going to let me finish with the aftercare? I can’t bring you breakfast until I’m done with these bandages. I’ve gotta rub some lotion on that rope burn, too.”

“Aha…” Nagito scooched back against the towel-covered pillows, “Only if you let me do the laundry later.”

Hajime chuckled. It was a fair trade. Nagito just had a way with bleach. It was almost supernatural — not even Hajime’s Ultimate Housekeeper talent could match it.

“You’ve got a deal.” 

Nagito seemed satisfied. He reclined, giving Hajime free rein over his wound care. 

Watching Nagito relax against the bed, completely at ease as he dressed his injuries, Hajime had a feeling they would both sleep well that night.