Work Text:
There have been a few things Komaeda has learned since coming to this island: Sonia has never eaten cod and Nanami doesn't know the difference between a doggy paddle and free style. Souda is usually nauseous; Tsumiki doesn't like wide-open spaces. Hinata takes his coffee with sugar.
Hinata's eyes get watery and big when he's unsure of something. Hinata reaches to pick things up with both hands. Hinata doesn't know his talent, his ambitions, doesn't know anything, and it'd be irritating if it weren't so incredibly, painfully endearing to push all his buttons and watch him cry.
And they are ultimates, all of them. Of course, as a rule, his admiration, his selfless love, extends to all the ultimates on this island with him; in this single regard, Komaeda wouldn't call himself picky, but. But.
“Say, Komaeda,” Hinata says, eyes averted, voice just trembling over the edge of casual curiosity, “did you mean it, when you said you’d help out the person who kills you?”
But if he had to choose, Komaeda would say that he loves Hinata the most.
—
"What were you thinking, Hinata-kun?" Komaeda asks later that night, leaning his elbows forward onto the windowsill. "What's your method of choice?"
They're in Komaeda's cottage again — less suspicious, Komaeda had said, in case they find a white hair or speck of green lint in Hinata's room once it's all over. He isn't sure if Hinata had taken it seriously, but he'd frowned, looked away; when his brow furrows, he looks like a puppy, helpless and gullible and lost in his lot. It makes Komaeda want to lead him around by the leash; it makes him want to wrap his hands tight around Hinata's throat and squeeze.
He will not, of course, do either of these things: Hinata is an ultimate, beloved and untouchable. If he can't consume Hinata, then at least he can by his own selfish means give up his own body for consumption.
A foot away, Hinata blinks back at him. "What?"
Komaeda waves a pale, airy hand. "Strangulation, poisoning, bludgeoning, drowning," he lists, ticking each off on a finger. "Or something more convoluted — would you want more of a death trap, Hinata-kun? Or you could make it look like an accident!"
Hinata looks vaguely queasy. "Wouldn't they know it wasn't an accident?" he asks after a moment, shifting his weight onto his other foot. "It's too suspicious."
"Hm," Komaeda hums, feeling a frown twist his face as he drops into a flatter affect. "Maybe you're right. We should frame someone, then."
There's an audible moment of Hinata shifting, swallowing, then shifting again. "If you're the victim," he starts quietly, and Komaeda feels a harsh swell of affection for the aversion of his eyes, a harsh swell of irritation at the emphasis on if, "they'll know that there's a trick. Framing won't be that easy."
Komaeda smiles long and thin. "Then we won't make it easy.”
—
Breakfast the next day is a rush if Komaeda's ever felt one. With Pekoyama’s death acting as a cushion from Togami’s murder and Komaeda’s reveal of his true colors, the others had carefully, hesitantly allowed Komaeda to rejoin their ranks. They still startle when they walk in and see him there, ankles primly crossed, hands wrapped around a cup of tea; he swallows it down with something like vindication.
Hinata doesn't speak to him at all; they’d agreed not to speak in public, after all. But his eyes touch Komaeda’s when he hands Hinata the sugar, and their fingers brush, just barely.
Beloved, untouchable, ultimate Hinata. Komaeda washes his hands as soon as he gets home.
—
"Do you want to die, Komaeda?" Hinata asks, lying sprawled on Komaeda's bed. They'd had a close call when the doors had swung open in the library, crept under tables and hid behind stacks while Gundham and Sonia searched for the occult section. When they'd gotten outside, they ran; Komaeda clings fast in his head to the sharp peaks of Hinata's breathing, the ups and downs of his chest on the inhale.
He has half the mind to feel bad for causing Hinata trouble, half the mind to be mad at himself. He had no intention of being seen with Hinata, but he can't quite help himself, because Hinata has freckles on his eyelids and his voice goes all high when he laughs. If this continues, his selfless love will start to turn selfish, and Komaeda has never been a selfish man.
But he digresses. "Not particularly," Komaeda answers, and is half relieved at the way that Hinata's breathing has steadied, half disappointed. "I suppose it doesn't matter to me all that much, not when you ultimates have your hope on the line. I gladly give up my body to you."
Hinata shoves himself upright; his white shirt sweat-clings to the angles of his body in horrible, delicious ways. "Would you do that for anyone?" he demands. "Give up your body, I mean."
Komaeda's brain whirls as he pictures it: Tanaka's boot snapping his bones. Souda's wrench slamming heavy and hard into his head. Sonia's delicate fingers digging deep into his eye sockets.
He thinks about Hinata's fingers. He thinks about Hinata's hands, dark and broad. He thinks about Hinata's skin, how it would feel on Komaeda's throat, the pressure and intimacy of the other boy slowly, carefully crushing his windpipe.
"Yes," he says cooly; the lie is slimy and sour on his tongue. "Of course."
When Hinata goes home for the night, he lets Komaeda check outside for others first. In the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, Komaeda lets himself stand there a moment longer than necessary — maybe two. Maybe a hundred.
When he goes to bed that night, his pillow smells like Hinata. He buries his face in the fabric and reminds himself that he's not and has never been a selfish man.
—
Nanami is suspicious of him.
Komaeda knows, because Komaeda’s not an idiot. Her gaze follows him, hair falling into her eyes, mouth twisted; there’s a question in her face and he’d never answer it even if she asked, but he is nonetheless furious that she hasn’t. Sweater falling off her shoulders, over her hands — she is an ultimate, but he doesn't worship her. He doesn't quite know how to unpack that.
And he sees it, too, when she talks to Hinata, eyes going wide, head tilted, all cutesy and girly in a way that Hinata has to like, that he has to find endearing — and isn't it deception, when she only does it for him? Isn't it at least a little bit wrong?
(“What?” Hinata would say. Komaeda can almost see it in his mind: Hinata flopped on his back, arms cross behind his head, across the foot of Komaeda’s bed like a dog in the spot he always takes. “No way, Nanami’s like that with everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Komaeda would insist if he had the courage, if he were in the mood. “Why would she be like that with everyone?”
The lean, slight muscles in Hinata’s abdomen tense deliciously when he hauls himself upright; Komaeda knows; he’s seen it. “Because she’s cute,” Hinata would say, voice flat, the duh not stated but still very clearly there. “She’s cute, so she acts cute.”
And maybe Komaeda would argue or maybe he’d kick off his shoes and climb onto the bed over Hinata; maybe he’d pin his wrists down and slam their mouths together until Hinata’s lip bleeds on his teeth. Maybe he’d bite so many marks into Hinata’s neck that he wouldn't be able to look Nanami in the eye, wouldn't feel right with Nidai’s hand on his shoulder, wouldn't be able to listen to Mioda joke about biting him without remembering how good he’d felt from Komaeda, below Komaeda — )
Over Komaeda’s fantasy and Hinata’s shoulder, Nanami’s eyes catch Komaeda’s, and he thinks: oh.
Everyone likes Hinata. Everyone thinks he is kind and charming and funny and oh, what Komaeda would do to him if he only — but no. He’s not. He’s not.
Komaeda takes a breath in, a breath out. Finishes his tea. Walks out, and pretends he can’t feel Nanami’s eyes on him.
He can, though. He feels them all the way home.
—
Here is a list of things that Hinata is: impatient, hot-headed, wide open and closed off all at once. Another list, separate and the same: full of heart, body, a tangle of limbs. The cling of a shirt collar to sweat-sticky neck; dark eyelashes turned blonde at the edges.
There’s a reluctant, restless patience in the way that Hinata sprawls across Komaeda’s floor, back to the wall. Komaeda can tell he’s been talking too long by the tick of Hinata’s brow, and keeps going; he’s seated in his desk chair, and there’s a strange perversion to being higher up than Hinata in any way, any, that makes him restless and reckless, a wheel down a hill that can’t stop before it crashes.
Hinata’s mouth clicks open; Komaeda’s clicks closed. He settles himself, tastes his own anticipation, and waits.
“You’re always asking me what I want to do,” Hinata starts, and his voice is both slower and more even than Komaeda had expected; he swallows his disappointment like a pill. “But I mean — what do you want, Komaeda? What do you want me to do?”
Everything, Komaeda wants to say. Nothing, Komaeda wants to say.
“I want you to do what you want to do,” Komaeda says.
There’s a pause as Hinata draws his knees up; Komaeda watches hungrily as Hinata’s hands move up and down his forearms in a practiced, comforting gesture. “Not everything is about me all the time,” he mumbles; his short nails leave light, barely there marks in his skin when he presses in.
Komaeda’s breath catches when Hinata looks up, and it’s green on green on green, and he hates it. Hinata looks focused, determined, a pull at his mouth that Komaeda can’t quite interpret. “How do you want to die?”
What a question that is. “Soon,” Komaeda replies idly, automatically, and then, so that he doesn't have to see Hinata’s reaction to that, “You could use your hands, if you'd like.”
“My hands,” Hinata repeats, and oh no, this expression isn't any better, isn't any better at all.
Komaeda sighs like the whole of this is a great inconvenience to him rather than a blessing. “Yes, Hinata-kun,” he replies, sliding off his chair to kneel in front of Hinata, still far enough above him that Hinata has to crane his neck to make eye contact. And it’s wrong of him to be up higher, wrong of him to reach down and twine their fingers together, wrong of him to lead Hinata’s broad, shaking hands to his throat. It just straddles the line between selfish and selfless, but it’s almost certainly wrong. “Like this.”
When Komaeda presses his thumbs down, he presses Hinata’s down, too — and there is stunning piece of a moment when he lets go and Hinata stays.
Then Hinata’s hands drop, trembling, into his lap. “Strangulation,” he says, voice deceptively even but for the catch at the end; and Komaeda thinks that in another world, another circumstance, Hinata would never be capable of murder. “You want me to strangle you.”
The warmth of Hinata’s skin still burns Komaeda even though they're no longer touching. “I want you to use your hands, Hinata-kun,” he replies patiently.
Hinata leaves soon after that, the first to go to dinner and the first one out the door. Komaeda agrees to wait ten minutes before doing the same, and sits with his back to the wall, on the floor where Hinata had sat, for twenty.
His hands burn with the warmth of Hinata’s skin.
—
The library has good acoustics, and that means Komaeda's voice carries well, bouncing back and forth against the windows and empty walls. Hinata stares at him with wide eyes, bright in the fluorescents, and it's no surprise, really; his eyes always get watery and big when he's unsure of something.
There’s something there to that; a baton is passed. Komaeda laughs, closes his stinging eyes —
and just like that, Hinata inherits his soul.
—
The next day, breakfast: Tanaka makes some broad hand gesture and knocks Saionji’s glass over. Ibuki swings her arm around Nanami’s shoulders and makes a lewd joke, deflating when it doesn't get a visible reaction from the other girl. Tsumiki giggles, delighted, when Sonia politely asks her about the nutritional value of the orange slices on the table.
Kuzuryu knocks his elbow into Hinata’s when he reaches across him for something. Kuzuryu tells Hinata something that makes a laugh spill out of Hinata’s pretty mouth. Kuzuryu smiles at Hinata the way he hasn't smiled at anything since Pekoyama died.
Komaeda sips his tea; Hinata takes his coffee with sugar. Everything is normal; everything is as usual.
It’s half past noon by the time Hinata comes to see him.
“Everyone’s going to hate you again if you keep antagonizing people,” he starts cautiously, leaning a shoulder into the doorframe of Komaeda’s cottage. “They’re cool, but I mean — Kuzuryu looked like he wanted to kill you. You hit a nerve.”
Uncomfortable, dutiful, and to the point; how very, very Hinata. His back to the other boy, Komaeda’s lip curls. “I only made a simple comment. If that was enough to inspire murder, then maybe Kuzuryu-kun needs to check his temper.”
Disbelief escapes in a short huff out of Hinata’s mouth. “Kuzuryu needs to — ” he echoes, heat building under his voice. “Do you hear yourself right now? I think you need to check yourself.”
It’s not a particularly clever or cutting line, but maybe Komaeda shouldn't have expected it to be. He turns slowly in his chair, staring impassively at Hinata, before rising to his feet in a long, fluid motion.
The door is still open. Hinata makes one hesitant, halting step backwards before Komaeda finishes his languid stride across the room, closing and locking them in quick and precise. Lock and key.
“Why would I need to check myself when I have you to do it for me, Hinata-kun?” he asks, honey-slow and sickly sweet.
It’s easy to forget, somehow, that Komaeda is the taller of the two of them: maybe it’s Hinata’s broad shoulders, or broad presence, or maybe it has nothing to do with Hinata at all. Maybe it’s Komaeda’s bony hips and wispy face, the way his existence seems to bleed right into nothingness as if though they are one in the same. Regardless, Komaeda finds himself aware of the height difference as he leans forward and down, just slightly too far into Hinata’s space to be normal. Komaeda could reach down and kiss him right now, if he wanted to. He could reach down and kill him, too.
It isn’t, of course, his right to do either of those things, and Komaeda has never been one to take liberties. He leans into Hinata’s space, watches his lips part, his cheeks flush. Leans back.
“You don't have me for anything,” Hinata replies after a moment, voice stuttering back to angry.
Komaeda smiles, slow and thin. “I know.”
Hinata leaves, and Komaeda is alone. He locks the door behind him, and the afternoon passes quiet and still.
—
Komaeda stays in his cabin; Hinata stays in his head. Everyone else, it seems, stays out of it.
Like a dog on his doorstep, Hinata is back before night even has the chance to finish falling. How dutiful.
“I,” Hinata starts, stops. His mouth hangs open doubly for a moment before he closes it, like he’s hoping the words will just pour out of him without any effort on his part. They don’t. “I don't think I can kill you. Anymore. I mean — I don't think it’s possible anymore.”
The courtesy smile pulled across Komaeda’s thin lips starts to melt away like candle wax. "Excuse me?"
The shifting of Hinata's weight makes the floorboards creak and groan. Komaeda watches the other boy pick at a spot on his arm, eyes averted, mouth screwed up into a rough, determined edge. He feels bad about it, at least; maybe that should make Komaeda feel better. Maybe it shouldn't make him feel like grabbing him by the hair and slamming his face into the edge of his desk. Maybe it shouldn't make him feel like kissing him.
Komaeda has seen a lot of Hinata at this point: he's seen him smiling, gracious, seen him as bright as the sun, as pale as death, tears in his eyes, fists shaking, knuckles clenched white — and he'd thought he'd seen enough of him, at this point, to be able to predict him. Hinata backs out, but he doesn't back out like this: half-hearted and stuttering, not even angry, not even embarrassed. He looks as if though there's a world of consequence on his shoulders, and Komaeda for the life of him can't figure out why.
It's not just nerve-wracking; it's infuriating. After a long stretch of silence, Komaeda gathers the remnants of his friendly enthusiasm and says, "And why exactly is that, Hinata-kun?"
Judging by Hinata's wince, he wasn't incredibly successful. "Kuzuryu said," he begins, and Komaeda is already feeling the sharp edges of laughter prick and bleed at his throat, "that he's noticed we've been spending a lot of time together, that — that everyone has. So if I killed you now, then — "
"That's your reason?" Komaeda spits, and his smile is all anger and razor blades and some deep, honey-thick desperation. "That Kuzuryu-kun told you — and what, that's it? Where's your courage, Hinata-kun? Where's your hope?"
Except that it's not his reason, because Hinata winces when Komaeda leans forward, and his eyes stay off and away, at the door or the window or anywhere but Komaeda's face. "I can't do it," he affirms, eyes flickering to Komaeda's for a second, then away; and it's green on green on green and he hates him for it, he hates him. And then, eyes away, mouth opening and closing, quivering like a rabbit: "I'm sorry."
But Komaeda isn't sorry, not like how he wants to be sorry. And Komaeda wants to be sorry so, so bad.
He reaches out, pale fingers against Hinata's tan skin, where his jaw meets his neck meets the scraggly ends of his messy haircut. Hinata shivers at the touch, and Komaeda thinks: not sorry enough.
So he reaches out more, traces his fingers down, down, down, until they catch at the edge of Hinata's shirt collar. White, pristine — and has Komaeda always wanted to mess it up this badly? Has this always been in him? And he can feel Hinata breathe under the tips of his fingers.
Down, down, down, and Komaeda's hands finally find purchase, long fingers wrapping around the base of Hinata's neck, thumbs placed gently just above his artery. If Komaeda wanted to, he could kill him here. Maybe then he'd be sorry enough. Maybe then.
Hinata's hands come up, broad and dark and so different than his, resting over Komaeda's long fingers like a warning. And then Komaeda looks up, and Hinata is already watching him, a set to his mouth and a furrow to his brow, eyes wide open like he's really seeing him.
The feeling in Komaeda's gut drops like he's just been shoved off the edge of the planet, and as he free falls, taking half a step back, his hands slip just so slightly away from Hinata's neck. There is stunning piece of a moment when he lets go and Hinata stays, his fingers feather-light over Komaeda's — and then Komaeda does something he hasn't done in a long, long time.
He runs away.
Runs down the stretch of the cabins, away from the hotel, past the farm and the bridge to the central island. Chest heaving, face burning — and lord knows when he last exercised, the last time he ran, because why did it matter, before this? What was there to run from? He's running, and why, because he's afraid — and of what? Of what?
Night finishes falling. Komaeda finds himself at the beach, staring moodily down at the spot he'd first woken Hinata, and waits until the dark sky and ocean air make his teeth chatter and his skin spot with goosebumps under his thin jacket. But Hinata doesn't come.
Like a dog on the doorstep, Komaeda is outside Hinata's cabin before he can think twice about it. Hinata opens the door before he even gets the chance to knock, eyes narrowed, leaning in the doorway as if to prevent Komaeda entry, and Komaeda thinks wryly, how dutiful.
"Hinata-kun," he starts, and then realizes he doesn't have more words just behind his tongue to continue with. "Hinata-kun," he says again, and then, "you answered."
Embarrassed would be the wrong word to describe the look on Hinata's face; he's too disgruntled to be embarrassed, too angry and too cautious, too concerned. "Yeah, well," he replies, scratching at his arm again, "you came."
Komaeda is struck by the realization that he wants to kiss Hinata without even an ounce of desire to make him bleed, even a little. He is immediately unhappy about this realization. "I did," he confirms blankly.
If Hinata notices his uncharacteristic lack of words, he doesn't comment. What he does do is frown, eye Komaeda up and down. Let his gaze run down Komaeda's face, pausing at his eyes, his jaw, his lips, and then lean slightly out of the way to make room for Komaeda to come inside.
Komaeda hasn't actually been in Hinata's cottage since before they'd started talking about Hinata killing him, and it hasn't changed except for the ways that it has: clutter on his desk, curtains slightly parted, pillow thrown inexplicably toward the foot of the bed. Komaeda considers all of these things carefully, then makes himself at home at the edge of Hinata's mattress.
It really was very impressive of Hinata to be able to hear him coming in the dark. Maybe it's Komaeda's shoes, the way they click on hard surfaces, or maybe his step is less graceful then he thought, or maybe Hinata simply has inexplicably excellent hearing that he hasn't chosen to share with anyone on the island yet. Truly, it was very impressive.
Or maybe Hinata had simply been waiting for him to show up. Komaeda hopes that it's not the case, because how embarrassing would that be, to be so predictable? But Hinata closes the door behind him and doesn't lock it, crosses the room to be closer but stays just out of reach, and Komaeda has to assume that's the answer.
"I'm here to try to change your mind," Komaeda begins the instant that he has Hinata's attention, "because I do think we could still do it — if anything, the fact that we've been seen together so much could only help your case, because if you were planning on killing me, why would you have let yourself be seen with me?" Hinata winces; Komaeda expects a bust of satisfaction, and when he doesn't get one, he continues on anyway, stubborn and certain that nothing has changed. "Not to call you stupid, Hinata-kun, just to say that perhaps we have not been the most careful. But I believe that if we frame someone elaborately enough —"
"You say "we" now," Hinata interrupts quietly. "You used to say "you"."
The words in Komaeda's mouth wilt and die. "Hinata-kun — " he starts, irritation in his chest; and then Hinata steps toward him, and Komaeda closes his mouth again.
Hinata looks for all the world like he's in pain, face twisted and dark, posture tight, but there's an odd sort of beseeching question in his eyes when he looks at Komaeda. "Did you mean it?" he asks, voice thin. "What you said in the library?"
"About my illness, you mean?" Komaeda clarifies. "Didn't I tell you, Hinata-kun? That was a lie.” He pauses, considers, weighing his options. "Unless it would make you feel better about killing me, in which case that was a lie, and I am in fact dying." He flashes a cheery, hopeful smile at the other boy. "Whichever feels better to you, Hinata-kun."
"Not that," Hinata replies, looking a bit ill. "After that. When you said — what you said after that."
Oh. "Oh," Komaeda says, mouth feeling dry. "That."
He doesn't answer; he won't. Hinata considers him for a long breath of a moment, then steps closer still. He's standing between Komaeda's knees now; from where Komaeda's seated at the edge of the bed, he has to crane his neck up to see him — and it's a good look for him like this, he thinks. Hinata was always meant to be far, far above him.
"I'm not going to kill you," Hinata affirms, face set; and his eyes are swirling crosshairs locked onto Komaeda like he's going to swallow him whole. "I'm sorry."
On this island, Komaeda is the lowest of the low; and they are all ultimates, all of them. As a rule, his admiration, his selfless love, extends to all on this island with him; in this single regard, Komaeda wouldn't call himself picky, but. But.
Komaeda smiles, slow and thin, “I know," and Hinata leans down, down, down to meet him.
But if he had to choose, Komaeda would say that he loves Hinata the most.