Work Text:
“Ryuki… You gotta get up.”
With a groan, Ryuki rolls over to his side to avoid the light currently attempting to rouse him from his sleep. He hears a chuckle above him as something gently shakes his shoulder. He sighs in defeat and rolls back over, slowly opening his eyes and letting his vision focus on the man attempting to wake him. “Mm… Good morning, Date-san.” he mumbles, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
“Good morning,” Date greets. “Now come on. We’re going to be late if you don’t get out of bed.”
Ryuki pushes himself up to a sitting position as Date makes his way out of their shared bedroom. It’s almost strange, how comfortable of a life they’ve settled into, but Ryuki wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. After years of living alone in this too-large house, the sound of oil bubbling in a frying pan is more pleasant than he ever could have imagined.
He finally kicks off the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed, grabbing Tama from her charging stand in the process. When he pushes her into his eye socket, he addresses her with a ‘good morning’, but she doesn’t answer. Strange. He’ll have to ask Pewter when he gets to work. For now, though, he hurriedly changes into his work clothes and makes his way out of the bedroom.
Date is finishing up their breakfast as Ryuki enters the dining room adjacent to the kitchen. Ryuki sits down just as Date sets a plate onto the table, and Ryuki barely even looks at it before beginning to scarf it down- he doesn’t need to know what it is to know it’s good. Date sits across from him and just… Smiles. He doesn’t have a plate in front of him. He just stares at Ryuki and smiles ever-so-softly.
This isn’t right.
He jumps at the sudden voice that isn’t his own. Was that Tama? She still didn’t seem to be responsive… Maybe he imagined it. “Um… Date-san, aren’t you going to eat?”
“Just enjoy your breakfast, Ryuki.”
Ryuki assumes Date has already eaten and shrugs off the comment. It doesn’t take him much longer to finish his breakfast, and he stands up to take his dirty dishes to the dishwasher. He doesn’t think too much about the fact that there’s no other dishware inside as he closes the door- Date may have just washed his dishes by hand if he ate earlier.
“Are you ready to go?” Date calls, and Ryuki turns to him with a smile.
“Yep. Let’s go.”
“Ryuki… You gotta get up.”
He’s already awake. His eyes are open- he had already put Tama in- but Date was gently shaking him as if he were still asleep. As if this was the same morning from a week ago.
“…Date-san?”
“Good morning,” Date greets. “Now come on. We’re going to be late if you don’t get out of bed.”
Date leaves the room and all Ryuki can do is watch him go. Is this deja vu? Is he dreaming? No, he must be imagining things. He shakes off the feeling and gets out of bed, stretching his arms above his head and sighing when he feels his shoulders pop. “Hey, Tama?” he calls out, and yet there’s no response. Strange. He’ll have to ask Pewter when he…
He had this same thought last week, didn’t he?
This isn’t RIGHT.
No, there’s no way. Last week he and Tama had been speaking like normal about the current case, which is about… About… What’s the current case about? Ah, maybe he’s having an episode again. Medications and therapy and all, it still happens every once in awhile. He forgets a lot, or imagines things. He’s just thinking this has all happened before.
He changes into his suit and trails into the kitchen, and there’s a plate of… What is that? Why is he having trouble focusing on what’s on the plate? Tama must really be malfunctioning for this to happen. He sits down at the table and begins to eat.
This isn’t RIGHT.
The voice is prickling at his head and the food isn’t sitting right; Ryuki feels queasy. Date is staring at him… Again. No, it’s not again, right? It’s just deja vu. This has never happened before. He’s just imagining that this has all happened before, and yet the thought makes him uneasy. “Um… Date-san? I-I’m sorry, I don’t feel well, I’m going to toss this.”
Date doesn’t say anything. He just stares and smiles.
Ryuki swallows hard, but he stands up and scrapes his plate before putting it in the empty dishwasher.
This isn’t RIGHT.
“Are you ready to go?” Date calls, but he’s almost drowned out by the voice. Ryuki slowly turns around and forces a smile on his face.
“Y…Yep. Let’s go.”
“Ryuki, you gotta get up.”
THIS ISN’T RIGHT.
Ryuki lets out a yell and pushes himself as far away as he possibly can. “What is this?! What is happening?!”
“Good morning,” Date greets, and now Ryuki realizes how clinical it sounds, how rehearsed it is. “Now come on. We’re going to be late if you don’t get out of bed.”
THIS ISN’T RIGHT.
“No! This- This keeps happening, why does this keep happening?” he yells. He holds his head between his hands as if it’ll keep it from splitting and the voice is yelling now, piercing through his brain to the point where he’s sobbing. “Make it stop, make it stop, please stop it…”
THIS ISN’T RIGHT.
“Stop it!” he scrambles backwards and into the wall, a painful thud resounding through the bedroom as his head slams into the plaster.
“ This isn’t right! ” The voice screams as he crumples to the floor.
Ryuki opens his eye.
There’s no light in the room. There’s no sun attempting to pull him out of his slumber, no one trying to shake him awake. There’s no Mr. Date.
“Ryuki…?”
Ryuki sluggishly turns his head and comes eye-to-eye with Tama, standing on the edge of his bed. “Ta…ma…?
“ he croaks out, and it
hurts
. His throat feels as if he’s swallowed sandpaper. “You’re… Talking to me…”
“Of course I’m talking to you,” Tama says, but it doesn’t have any of her usual bite. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He doesn’t have a good answer. He doesn’t have any answers. He goes to turn his head back to the ceiling when Tama comments, “I really thought I had lost you.”
“Huh?” is all he muster. What does she mean she thought she ‘lost’ him?
“Ryuki…” Tama sighs and moves to the nightstand. “Do you know what happened?”
“I was…” he coughs, his throat protesting every possible use of his vocal chords. “Agh…”
“Here. Drink.”
Tama pushes a small glass of water closer to him, and he sits up to take it. He doesn’t remember getting water. Did Tama get it? Is this another dream? The coolness of the liquid feels real as it soothes his voice, but Mr. Date’s touch had felt real too. The breakfast he had eaten had tasted real. What is real?
“You’ve been like this for almost two weeks now,” Tama begins to explain as he sets the glass down. “You haven’t gotten out of bed. I’ve practically had to force-feed you. You wouldn’t respond to any outside stimulus… I would have had to call the hospital by the two week mark.”
“So it was all… A dream…?” He knows the answer but he asks the question anyway.
His partner sighs again. “I’m not sure if ‘dream’ is the right word for it. You’ve been conscious, just… Absent. You were trying to escape what happened…”
Of course. The cathedral. The explosion. Kizuna, Mizuki… and Mr. Date. Mr. Date, who’s dead .
“How did… How did you get me back?” All he has are questions. He has no answers of his own, or perhaps he doesn’t have any way to answer for his sins. Ryuki takes in a deep breath and exhales hard before he forces himself to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet bump into empty glass bottles, knocking them over into wrinkled clothes and dirty paper plates.
“Boss granted permission for me to read your mind until you snapped back out of it. I basically sent signals to your subconscious so you could recognize that you were ‘dreaming’.”
“But why ? Why wake me up?” The outburst startles him as much as it does Tama. He’s felt nothing but apathy since he’s been conscious and yet he’s suddenly so angry that he can’t see straight. “Why didn’t you just leave me be?”
“Ryuki…”
“What, so I would’ve died if I didn’t stop dreaming?!” he continues, a harsh laugh coming out of him. “You should’ve just let it happen! I deserve it!”
“Ryuki!”
“At least I would’ve been able to die happy !”
The room falls silent as his head falls into his hands. He shouldn’t have woken up. Tama shouldn’t have saved him. He should’ve just been left to die like he deserved , like he left Mr. Date to die.
“...Above all else,” Tama starts, softly, as if he’s a scared animal. “I am here to support you. To protect you. And I will do everything in my power to meet those two objectives, Ryuki.” It isn’t often she sounds so clinical, yet so endearing all the same. “That… That’s why I’m here. Isn’t that why you saved me…?”
“I don’t know, Tama. I don’t know.”
He just wants to go back to sleep.