Starry Nights and Kisses

Please don't say you love me.

Kokichi is dirty.

He always has been, and he knows he’ll die this way. There’s too many overgrown seeping stains that’ll never wash out. Too much blood spilt and resting on his itching palms for him to ever be clean again.

He was dirty the moment someone laid their hands on him, from the moment he looked at his dad wrong and spent the next hour facing the consequences. From the moment his mother looked away from him with eyes overflowing with guilt, because the bruises on his face -a proud trophy of survival- were too much to even bear to look at.

The bruises faded a week later.

The memory didn’t.

(not that it mattered, they were back on his face the next night)

_________

He’s dirty when he finally gets his first boyfriend, and physical contact is all he knows. It’s suffocating. Hands all over him, and when a gentle whisper of “no” finally comes out, it goes neglected and scorned. So he remains complicit in his touch, lets himself be moulded and touched and shaped. Maybe this way he can convince himself he’s alive. Not decaying. Not dying. If only it could feel good, though.

Scolding shower water bites at his skin as he scrubs for hours, his back, his thighs, and that disgusting place in between his legs. It all gets scrubbed until it’s raw and aching, and god does it hurt.

but he never manages to feel clean.

_________

One winter night, when he stares into a mirror and doesn’t recognize the boy staring back him he realizes

I really am too far gone now, aren’t I?

___________

Except apparently he’s not, according to the boy with a roaring voice and stars in his eyes.

The boy who’s ambition clouds his judgement, and his own heart cruelly blinds him with artificial trust. The boy who screams at movies and smiles with his eyes, and for some fucking reason doesn’t leave Ouma alone. Doesn’t leave him to decay here, to continue rotting and molding until he’s completely incurable.

He can only pray it isn’t love.

___________

Though one late evening, in their almost shared apartment after one too many drinks of stuff they shouldn’t have even been able to buy, Momota plays with fire and gets a little too close for comfort.

“Ouma, man.” He slurs out.

“You’re….good, y’know? Like you’re so good but….”

The nonsensical words die in the air, peacefully. Slowly. Everything is going slowly, that’s probably the alcohol though, they die but they don’t leave. They embed themselves in Ouma’s little mind, and they swell up and pop gently into some beautiful mass of colours.

And he laughs, a little bit (or maybe a lot he can’t really tell) because this is all so fucking funny.

What happened to that little shaky bruised boy who knew better than to listen to a drunk man's ramblings?

______

And it’s fine. It’s good, even. For a while that’s how it stays. With warm little laughs and burning smiles with Momota by his side. The softness isn’t what he’s used to. This warm fluttery fire twinkling inside of his chest isn’t something he likes. isn’t something he deserves.

But he accepts it anyway.

Momota fills him with so much life sometimes Kokichi truly wonders how he ever thought he was dying.

_______

Until Kaito fucks it up.

He doesn’t just fuck it up though, he destroys it. He chokes on both the gasoline and the fire and the burning of this massive fucking mistake.Because he had to go and ruin it now.

He had to do the one fucking thing that Kokichi absolutly cannot handle.

“You don’t mean that, Momota-chan.” He snarls.

“I do, Kokichi. I promise you. I really do lov-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

He’s shaking now, hands balled up into little trembling fists and he hates this. He hates this so much. This is his least favorite kind of lie.

Kaito doesn’t love him. Kaito cannot love him. Because he’s clean, and warm and so disgustingly affectionate and beautiful and it makes Kokichi feel sick, because he’s tainted and stained and ugly. Good, sweet, loving Kaito has been deluded into caring someone so revolting and curdled and it’s all so wrong.

______

he doesn’t know when he started crying, maybe somewhere between the screaming and falling apart. but kaito’s there by his side in moments, with a touch gentler than what kokichi’s used to, murmuring sweet truths. and for once, this touch doesn’t feel like it’s tearing him open, leaving him bleeding with a scab that’ll forever stay dirty.

no….

in fact, if kokichi didn’t know any better, he might even say this feels like healing.