『 R E Q U E S T S , C L O S E D 』AnimeCharacters x Reader

28. Nagachika Hideyoshi x Ghoul! Reader | Blood, Detergent, and His Parka

→ character : Nagachika Hideyoshi | Tokyo Ghoul

→ requested by : SasheeTadashee

→ 05042017

→ wherein hide catches you eating something that isn't the meat of a burger from their local fast food joint.

[a/n]: as with what the requester asked for, hide and the reader are friends, and you may choose to interpret this as platonic love or romantic love.

((here have 1400+ words of pure dissatisfaction because what the fuck happened to my writing i think i have writer's block))

xx

Your mouth has become so well-used to taking in different kinds of human food that it passes down your throat with nothing more than a small gag that easily shies behind curled fingers. It's tasteless, and the only thing you can really feel is the still-lingering warmth that presses against the walls of your mouth and down your throat; the gag that follows is a little louder, but thankfully, Hide never looks up from the handful of fries that he chews with ease.

You push your grimace behind a solemn smile, and you're glad the silence is permeated by the little snips from conversations of other people, younger and older, because you fear that if you put the burger away and try to speak, your words are going to be sloshed and lost underneath a jet of vomit.

So you smile when Hide's eyes are stuck on yours for longer than a moment, swallowing what you could despite the burn that slowly traveled down your throat. You let the hum of the evening crowd speak the words you couldn't, let the pale fluorescent lights spill over the plane of the table, rubbed to shininess from one of the passing employees.

For a little while longer, you allow the illusion to glisten Hide's eyes with naivety, and you dread in silence as the seconds sift through your fingertips like fine powder. It makes the burgers are a little harder to swallow.

xx

It's a Tuesday, and the skies have already transformed into their nightly robes, stars clinging to it like dust. Where you are, the vibrations of the city and its lights are rejected, and the area is more populated by grime and garbage and lines of amateur graffiti, with a balding mutt head-deep into a bag that's been teared open by vicious, unkempt pairs of teeth.

Somebody your age would have settled down, legs crossed in front of them, devouring coffee and sentences from hands opened like a lovingly-deliberated present, ink and lamplight strangling them in their self-created noose as the night darkens the same way the lines under their eyes do.

Alas, here you are, soles stained with sticky mud and leeching guilt, praying silently for the distinctive groan of a human that's stumbling in their drunkenness. You can already feel the kagune burning elation onto the skin on your back, pleading for freedom. Wretched stripes of colors of delirium that bleed darker and darker from the blood that it's been tattooed with, slithering its tendrils with a spite you wished you'd be sliced free from.

Your Tuesday evening victim stumbles and giggles their way to you, dressed in a plainness befitting the ugly landscape, and with a roll of your shoulders, your kagune erupts in a blind of color.

It's not until the man's screams are swallowed greedily by the flesh of your throat that you notice Hide's quavering voice a dozen paces behind you (A dozen paces you could never hope to cross the way Hide's looking at you.) The dead man sinks into the mud blushing darker from shed blood the same way your heart twists and falls, and you know you've slashed a ferocity onto the little pure image Hide has filed away in his head.

xx

It's a surprise to able to step into Hide's home once again. It's a surprise Hide willing to touch shoulders with you. It's not a surprise that Hide tries to wipe his terror away with the sleeve of his jacket. It's not a surprise Hide whimpers into the air when your eyes blink unfocused.

"So you're. . ."

"Yeah."

It's been years since the atmosphere's so visibly awkward that your shoulders sink a little, and your gaze turns sideways. The guilt clothes your hands, shines the stripes of drying blood redder against your skin. You want to hide your hands, your neck, your mouth under your shirt, but that too has vicious red screamed all over it from the man's relentless thrashing.

Everything you see is poisoned and pouring with the certainty of ruining, and, as reluctant as you are, you sear the image of Hide's deep frown into the sentiments of your mind, because this is probably going to be the last time you see the outline of his lips, in the dark where the freeze was clinging to you.

What you would give to be back in that noisy chair of the fast food joint, swallowing burgers and gags and vomit, because the discomfort and the pain was your own, not Hide's. The room is painted stripes of night and the disarray of several of Hide's things, lacking the luster of Hide's genuine smile as he talks the sunlight away, performing animatedly, something you try so hard so imitate, but you can't seem to smile for as long as Hide does.

The small pats of Hide's hideous striped socks as he retreats into the comfort of a room that hasn't been tainted by your presence drive small droplets of tears to fill the space of the corners of your eyes, and you choke on a sob.

The pats of Hide's returning sound torturous as they travel to your ears, and when you glance up from the heaviness of tears unshed, you're surprised Hide's fingers aren't wrapped around a phone that's glowing with the number of a Ghoul Investigator, but instead around a parka, one of the parkas Hide flushed with fondness for.

"I've never had to wash out anything besides food stains," Hide admits, and his arm stretches a little, not enough to reach you, "but I suppose trying to wash out blood's going to make a cool story for my future wife. . .?"

You blink at him, clueless. Moments later, your tears and the heaviness vanish beneath a laugh. You throw your head back, even. Now Hide's eyes are wide with puzzlement, and he presses the parka to his chest.

"I honestly thought you'd just run away. Forever," you say when the giggles and the shakes of your shoulders end, "but now you're giving me one of your favorite articles of clothing. You sure you want me mutilated in this?"

"What."

"Aren't you gonna turn me over to those Investigators with their quinques?" you ask him with a sharp turn of your eyes, "You've seen me brutally murder a human, I'm surprised they haven't broken down your door and ripped me to pieces yet."

"If they do that, my sincerest apologies to your carpet," you add.

"Just take the parka, damn it," Hide practically thrusts it into your unsuspecting hands, and you stare at it for a long moment, "I'm not calling any Investigators to rip your body open, and you know damn well I'm not going to let them do it on my carpet. I paid good money on that."

After the light banter ends, and you feel much more relieved than you have for a long time, you slip into another room and pull the bloodied clothes up and off, dressing yourself in the parka. It slides over your skin like it was meant to, and it's practically suffocating in Hide's scent, which was of whatever cologne he picks up from a superficial examination in the grocery. The one on the parka was fruity, probably a blend.

Hide takes your clothes with a small muttering of how much detergent he was going to spend, and when he returns, his hands are at his sides as he offers a, "Want to watch a movie and do homework after midnight?"

You're grateful the way Hide invites you to the couch with a gentle pat against one of the soft cushions; there's a noise as the television static buzzes into a colorful life, and when you peek at Hide, you see the smile he's flaunting, with a naturalness that you believed had been banished. You think you've earned it, and you smile, too, earnest and shy, into the fingers closed into a loose fist, leaning a little closer to him, laughing a little louder alongside him.

(It's two more movies before Hide turns to the sprawl of unfinished homework, his eyes lit with panic, and you cackle from your spot in the couch. It's been hours, but as you point to the errors displayed on the screen, you're simply overjoyed to see the pout on Hide's face as he slams his frustrations on 'Backspace'.)