Work Text:
Keiji’s fountain pen scraped gently against the offwhite cardstock. There was a gentle yellow light streaming onto his workspace from his small lamp, the dark mahogany of his wooden desk looking warmer than it does in natural light.
He finished his sentence with a neat period. He wasn’t sure what to write next. He wasn’t even sure who he was writing to.
After checking the guest list, Keiji deduced he was writing to the Nakamuras, thanking them for attending his wedding. Keiji had never been close to any of the Nakamuras, but his mother insisted they be invited. She said it would be rude not to invite family friends, even if Keiji had wanted to keep it a small and more personal event.
Keiji was about to start writing again when heard a sound. A strange sound, one of a slight creak with maybe a bit of a scratchy edge to it, but he ignored it. He had his favorite song on repeat in the background, and he was working diligently on his thank you cards. The night was probably just getting to him.
Keiji finished the Nakamura’s thank you card with a loose signature in the same dark forest green ink, setting it in the pile with the others Koutarou, his husband, had to sign himself. Keiji’s lips ghosted into a smile when he thought about how long it was going to take to actually get these letters sent out if Koutarou had to sign them.
He checked his watch. 2:13am. He had two options: the first was to keep working until Koutarou got back from drinking with his friends, or he could just give into the heavy feeling tugging at his eyelids and curl into bed on his own. He felt himself get stuck between the two.
Perhaps he’d just sign a few more cards, maybe two or three, and if Koutarou still hadn’t arrived by the time he finished, he’d get some rest. So he continued on.
The next card was for the Kuroos, a good friend of his and his family. Kuroo had come to the wedding with his parents and sister, who Keiji had all known very well since early highschool. This card would be easy to write.
He wrote fast, letting the ink seep into the fibers of the paper as each letter was laid down. He used words like love, affection, and kindness. The Kuroos had never given him anything but love and affection and kindness. Their family had always been absolute angels to Keiji’s.
He signed his name with love, and slipped the letter in its envelope, placing it in the same pile as the others.
He let his fingers tap against the desk before he began starting the next one. He’d heard the sound again. It was almost like a… snap. A fast, crackled snap, or maybe a drawn out, slow, smooth snap. He couldn’t decide.
He placed the cap on his pen.
He sat still, with his hands folded neatly in his lap, elbows carefully perched on the armrests of his comfortable dark brown wing chair. He waited. The music continued around him, but it was quiet. He never put his music too loud when he was working on something he wanted to concentrate on.
It was quiet enough to where he could still listen to the other sounds around him, which he’d noticed had been growing in number.
He didn’t know what was happening, exactly.
There were multiple sounds. Sounds close to him, so close they felt like they were ringing in his head. But others were distant, hiding in the crevices of his ears and desperately crawling away from the arms of his ear drums. Others were just barely at arm’s reach, balancing on a tightrope of can I hear that, or are the others mixing?
They were random but on repeat.
They were high but low, whiny but howling.
But they were so quiet.
Then he heard a click, one he knew, one he could recognize. The door creaked open. He reached up to push his glasses further up his nose bridge.
Koutarou walked through the door, looking much more sober than Keiji had expected. “Hello, Koutarou,” he said, voice even.
Koutarou blinked at him, a confused look on his face. “Hey. W-what are you doing awake?” he asked, glancing around the dimly lit room. Keiji forgot how dark he’d left it, with just his desk lamp on.
He glanced at the cards on his desk. “Just signing some cards before bed, is all.”
Koutarou’s confusion didn’t seem to dissipate. “At…three in the morning? I thought you had work tomorrow. You have to stop overworking yourself, baby.”
Akaashi tilted his head. Was it three already?
He checked his watch. 3:27am. He’d been sitting in the dark, listening to the sounds around him for over an hour. “Oh. I didn’t notice the time.”
Koutarou just nodded. He looked so…
Tense.
Keiji stood up and began organizing his papers slowly, leaving clear piles of which cards Koutarou had to sign and which ones needed to be sent out.
He saw it first. Koutarou’s hand reaching out. But then it rested gently on his forearm, stilling his motions. He looked up and into his husband's eyes, which were empty.
“Keiji, that’s enough,” he said.
Keiji was bewildered again. He’d only been making neat piles of his cards-
“You’ve been doing that for minutes now. It’s time to go to bed, Keiji.”
Oh. “Okay,” Keiji just nodded. Minutes? That wasn’t right. Koutarou was probably just exaggerating.
Keiji followed his husband to the bathroom, Koutarou’s hand still holding gently onto his. They brushed their teeth beside each other in silence, with his song in the background.
Koutarou left him there when he finished, and Keiji began to dab small amounts of moisturizer on his cheeks to complete his nighttime routine.
He smoothed the cream around the rest of his face.
He grabbed his deodorant, and put that on, too.
He slid his wedding ring off his finger. He never wore it to bed; he was always too scared of losing it, of having it be lost to the abyss that are bed sheets, or dropping it somehow in the night. He’d been told he sleepwalked on occasion.
He twirled it around in his fingers gently, admiring the sheen of the silver. Koutarou had picked it well. Keiji loved him a lot, loved him more than Koutarou understood.
He set the ring in the center of his palm and held it up to eye level, fingers laying flat. It was so small, and so insignificantly so. He didn’t really understand it. What was the purpose of letting a ring be the symbol of two people’s love? Of his and Koutarou’s love? He loved him so much that he knew this silly little thing would never be able to convey it.
But he did love the ring, as well.
“Keiji,” he suddenly heard. He turned to look at his husband, who was standing at the doorway.
“Yes, Koutarou?”
“Please, come to bed. Are you okay?”
Keiji blinked. “Yes, of course. Why?”
That seemed to silence Koutarou into thinking.
After a minute or two of quiet stillness, Koutarou’s voice rang, soft and echoey in the bathroom. “It feels like you’re not here.”
Keiji nodded. He didn’t feel like he was making much of a presence, either. “Okay.”
Koutarou didn’t look like he enjoyed Kejij’s response. His usual bright smile was wiped clean from his face, and his copper eyes were dull and dim. Keiji walked up to him.
He reached out and cupped his husband’s face in his hands, warm cheeks against his palms. Koutarou looked hopeful, for a moment.
“You feel weird,” Keiji said.
Koutarou’s features shifted, his lashes lowering. He was obviously disappointed. He moved away from Kejj, letting his face slip from his hands. “Let’s go to bed, okay?”
And Keiji nodded, following him closely after he set his ring down on the bathroom counter. They laid down together, close enough to touch but far enough to be able to breathe still.
Keiji’s eyes closed.
When Keiji woke up, he shot up to a sitting position and felt the precipitation clinging to his skin. He felt the sweat, the blood, the tears. He felt it around him. He was in it.
He moved slightly.
It wasn’t there.
He’d woken up Koutarou, as well. He hadn’t meant to. It would have been easier if he would have remained asleep, anyways.
Koutarou gently touched his cheek. “What’s wrong with your face?” he asked tentatively. Keiji thought he sounded anxious; his voice was quiet and clipped, tight, almost.
Keiji slapped his hand away and leaned forward, curling his legs closer to him as he moved away from his husband to press his back against the headboard of their bed. “Nothing,” he mumbled. The blankets were half on his legs and half off, and he desperately wanted to be covered by them fully, but his hands had business elsewhere.
He reached up to scratch at his cheeks again. He needed something beneath his nails. Something embedded in there, in that little space between the skin protecting sensitive nerve endings and flesh and his keratin nail.
“Keiji, please stop scratching at your face like that,” Koutarou pleaded, and reached out again, but Keiji just pushed him away with his foot. He kicked him.
Koutarou’s face fell immediately at the feeling of Keiji’s foot on his stomach. He looked destroyed.
“Koutarou. If you’re worried about me, please,” Keiji said, letting his nails dig further into his skin, letting the little pieces collect beneath his nails, “please leave me alone.”
Koutarou let his eyes close, his soft lips forming a little frown at Keiji’s words.
Keiji just scratched harder at the sight. He pressed harder on his face with his nails. He knew his face would start bleeding soon; the skin would be easily broken from the moisture of his sweat.
Moist skin always breaks easier.
He waited for another moment until Koutarou opened his eyes again, but he refused to look at Keiji’s face. “Baby. Please, tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been acting weird ever since I got home last night. Did something happen while I was out?”
Keiji shook his head a little bit too hard. He felt his dark curls itch his forehead, and he simply couldn’t bear it. He reached up with his bloodied fingernails and let them race through his hair before he tugged, tugged so hard he pulled some out.
He heard Koutarou gasp and reach out again. He felt the mattress shift beneath his weight before he felt the hands around his wrists, stronger than before. He couldn’t shake them off as they tugged his own away from his hair.
“Let go, Koutarou,” he hissed.
But Koutarou just stared down at him from where he was kneeling, an unreadable expression on his face. “Please…please just stop, Keiji. I can’t sit by and watch you make yourself…b-bleed like that. Look at you…”
Keiji looked at his nails, Koutarou’s hands still wrapped around his wrists. There was blood beneath his nails and on the pads of his fingers. He felt his cheeks tingle, he felt them burn.
“Koutarou, I swear to fucking God, if you don’t let me go-”
“What? Are you going to kick me again? I’d rather you hurt me than you hurt yourself, Keiji.”
Keiji’s eyes narrowed. He needed his hands back, he needed his hands back, he needed his hands back.
He tugged.
He tugged hard, but Koutarou was stronger.
He tugged harder, hard enough to knock Koutarou off his balance and push him backwards.
Keiji knew that there was a small pulse of fear going through Koutarou’s nerves then. He knew it because he’d shoved him backwards, to where he’d fall off the bed if he didn’t catch himself.
He watched Koutarou’s eyes blow wide in the moonlit room, and finally, his fingers instinctively released Keiji’s arms so he could catch himself.
Keiji shot out of bed, away from his husband. He inspected his nails.
He touched his cheeks, gentle. There was a slight burn when he made contact.
He looked at Koutarou, who was looking at him, still sitting on the bed.
He wanted to scratch at his face. He wanted to scratch at the delicate skin of his cheeks until he couldn’t anymore. He wanted to tear his skin off, he wanted to rip it off in layers until he got to the flesh lining his bones.
But he didn’t want to do that in front of Koutarou, who already looked terrified and saddened from just watching him pull at his hair.
His fingers twitched.
“Keiji-” Koutarou began. He started moving off the bed.
“Please don’t touch me.”
Koutarou froze. He shook his head as he stood up. “Okay. Okay, I won’t. I promise.”
“Please…” Keiji said, and pressed his back against the wall. “Please leave. I don’t want you to see. I need to-”
He felt tears run down into the scratches on his face, and he felt them sting.
“I’m not leaving you, Keiji. I’m here, okay, I’m here and I want to keep you safe.”
Keiji didn’t have the heart to tell him what he really wanted to say.
When Koutarou woke up, he could barely peel his eyes open. His eyelids felt so heavy and he wanted to keep them shut and sleep for another week.
But he sat up. He’d fallen asleep on Keiji’s desk chair, keeping watch on him. He still had no idea what the fuck had happened last night with his husband. He didn’t know why Keiji had been scratching at himself like that, he didn’t know why he had needed it so badly.
But now, with the early morning light filtering through his windows, and Keiji’s song still playing on the speaker, he saw nothing of Keiji in the room except blood on the carpet.
Koutarou felt a slight panic quiver inside his bones. The blood was red, bright red. Saturated. Soaking into the fibers of the carpet like a dye. New.
Koutarou leaned down and pressed his right index and middle finger to it, and the carpet made a horrifying squelching sound as the pressure increased. His fingers came back sticky and glistening red.
Koutarou’s heart pounded twice as fast inside his chest, sending his blood pumping through his veins rapidly.
This was Keiji’s blood. On the floor.
He burst out of the room and stormed to the bathroom. Droplets of Keiji’s blood made a perfect little trail, a road, a path, a map on the floor for him to follow.
The bathroom door was locked.
“Keiji, for the love of God, please, open this door right now,” he said, his hands shaking, his legs shaking, his voice shaking.
He didn’t want Keiji to die. He didn’t want him to bleed out in the bathroom, alone, obviously not okay. He loved him so, so much.
His words were met with silence.
He jiggled the doorknob, tears gathering relentlessly in his eyes. “Keiji, please. I love you so much and I can’t bear to see you hurt, I can’t stand to see you hurt yourself. Why are you doing this? What’s wrong, baby? I-I can help you. I’m here for you. I’ll help you, I promise, I swear I’ll do my best for you. I’d do anything for you, baby, just please let me help you.”
But Keiji didn’t respond.
Koutarou’s fingers grazed the wooden door frame. He had only one choice, now. He needed to get to Keiji.
He took a step back and lifted his foot, eyes trained on the area right next to the doorknob.
And he kicked. He kicked again and again, with all his strength, with all his weight, with all his tears. He kicked till his foot was raw with pain and the door flung open, the wooden frame cracking beneath the strain and splinters flying.
The second the door flung open, Koutarou was overwhelmed by the sickening stench of blood.
He almost didn’t want to see what Keiji had done.
But Keiji was standing, leaning just slightly against the wall across the door, as casual as ever, staring Koutarou down with ice cold eyes.
Koutarou felt his limbs go limp.
Keiji’s cheeks, his porcelain skin, his usually oh so soft and pale skin dusted with just enough blush to make Koutarou go up in flames, were dripping to the floor with crimson red blood. Down, down, down, cutting lines into his throat and making stripes of crimson lead to his shirt.
His cheeks were sunken in, so sunken in.
Koutarou took a step closer. He looked closer.
Keiji’s cheeks weren’t sunken in. They were clawed in. Scratched to the point of gone, flesh exposed from pus covered blisters, skin quivering and glistening in the light and dripping more and more dark, sickening blood, blood like syrup. Keiji’s jaw shook.
His nails, his fingers, his palms. They were saturated with blood. Soaked like a sponge.
Koutarou wanted to throw up.
He could see pieces of flesh, no matter how small, sticking to Keiji’s nails and fingertips. Little pieces of rolled up skin.
Koutarou felt his soul leave his body. “K-keiji…”
His tears were non-stop, rolling down his pristine skin. Unscathed skin.
Keiji looked at him with absolute malice.
He raised a hand, curling his fingers slowly, and pointed at his husband accusingly.
“You,” he growled. “Your skin…it’s…it’s too clean.”
Koutarou’s eyes widened.
He looked around him.
He looked at the smears of blood on the wall, on the mirror, on the door, on the carpet, on the tile.
He looked at his husband. Keiji, who was covered in his own blood.
And he ran.