Chapter Text
One day Denji and Asa learned Death had designs for them all. And it was set in stone. They knew when it would come (July) and who would be their compatriots in death (the whole world, everyone). And it wasn’t just prophecy or warfare that broke the news… it was the numbers, the facts, the future.
In just two months, the world would end.
“This time… for real. For real, for real,” Asa said, her face on the table between them.
It wasn’t that long since they’d reunited and become friends again. They had just started feeling like a good team. They weren’t teenagers anymore… they were sadder and stupider and a little stronger. Then they had to go and try something stupid, like kiss each other.
Asa leaned up and took another sip of her sweet, fruity canned cocktail. They had spent a ton of money on drinking and eating tonight, just in case they decided to believe what the Future Devil had said. And now she had a boozy drink of every flavor to go through. Some had cute and feminine labeling, others the kind of thing marketed to dads. Asa thought to herself that she would never be a dad. She would not be dad-aged.
“My dream…” Denji mumbled, his head under the futon.
Yeah. His dream.
“Maybe you need to change your dream now,” Asa said. “Something you can do in two months.”
Denji groaned.
“You think I could get ten girlfriends in two months?”
“Maybe just stick with one,” Asa said. “Ten is a lot to manage…”
“After two months, I’ll never have sex again…” Denji said.
Asa sighed.
What had been her botched dreams? She guessed she had just wanted to be free to return to her normal life. Right? But that dream had ended a long time ago. Yoru, miffed that she was part of someone else’s prophecy and not her own main character, had disappeared, only appearing occasionally to talk with Fami and Nayuta.
So normal wasn’t possible.
She had also wanted to live selfishly. She
She thought back to her last thoughts after submitting herself to the Falling Devil. She had wanted, just once, to…
Asa blushed.
“Yeah.” She said. “No more sex.”
What a weird guy. Sex wasn’t all that great, she thought, but she understood how people like Denji could become obsessed with it, like it was a drug. It was one of those physical things, you know? A rush of endorphins.
In her experience, sex had been more about power and boredom than anything else. But it was easy for girls to see that. It was hard for dumb boys — like Denji — to understand this right away. This, she had sympathy for.
“Is that all you want to do before you die? Sex?” She said.
His stomach gurgled loudly and he scratched his ass.
“I’ll probably spend more time with Nayuta, probably see if I can honor Pochita’s legacy pretty good.”
“For me…” she said, moving her thumb around the tab of the can. “... I guess I’d want to have sex with someone I love.”
“... sounds nice,” Denji said. He looked wistful.
“Mm,” Asa said. “But I don’t really know if I’m capable of love. Or, like, falling in love in two months. So. I guess I’ll settle for having sex with someone who loves me.”
“What makes you think someone will want to have sex with you in two months?”
“What?” Asa said, annoyed.
“You just said you couldn’t do it. What makes you think someone else could?”
Asa had not questioned it.
“I… I bet I could. I mean, at least I could get a boyfriend in two months, and then from there it’s a pretty quick road to love, right? Men are easy like that,” Asa said. “I’m young, I have a good job, I’m cute. There’s, you know, something appealing about the way I talk. So if I can’t get a girl to fall for me in two months, I could probably get a dude to think he’s in love with me pretty easy.”
“That’s so stupid. You don’t get guys at all, Asa.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Asa said, kicking him. “You’ve never even had a girlfriend.”
“That’s not true! I’ve had plenty of girlfriends!”
She rolled her eyes. “A real one.”
Denji sat up.
“You don’t think I could get a girlfriend in two months?”
“I don’t think anyone wants to have a relationship with… this,” Asa said meanly. “You’re so horny. It’s really off-putting. I’m not sure how you’re even going to get someone to have sex with you that isn’t pity sex.”
Denji was furious. He began to gesticulate wildly. “What the fuck!? I’m great at sex. You don’t know what you’re talking about at all… it’s really embarrassing for you, actually.”
“I can get someone to date me before you can,” Asa said. “Bet everything I have.”
“You’re on!!” Denji said.
“And… sex!” Asa said. “I’m going to have REAL sex. More than you.”
Denji’s nostrils flared.
“That’s actually impossible!! No way!!”
“I’m going to have such a crazy successful love life,” Asa said, beginning to grind her teeth. “Everyone’s going to love me and want to fuck me. You watch! By the time I die, I’m going to have lived such a full, sexual youth…”
It was kind of funny, the more they upped the ante on the deal they’d made. The rest of the night, they talked through the rules (a point system for different sexual acts, a way to keep track, a way to confirm that someone really did like you and wasn’t just fucking you for pity) and taunted each other and made weird jokes about death and fucking and death.
---
Though Reze already worked with Asa and had often come over, Denji had been somehow reluctant to be alone with her. It was always hanging between them that he had asked her to sacrifice everything to be with him, for real, and she hadn’t done it. She had flirted with him constantly, yet taken every opportunity to crush his heart with a well-timed rejection. He had to admit he liked that. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t keep asking for her to do it to him, right?
Denji asked Reze to come over to a party at his place — drinking and takeout with a group of people, an elaborate setup so he and Asa could play the field. They found their way out the door, stopping at the makeshift shrine he’d put in the backyard for Meowy and the dogs.
Denji wasn’t sure how he did it, but somehow when he talked to her about Nayuta taking care of those animals… she had begun to cry.
“Nayuta’s so lucky… she’s so fucking lucky…” she said, trying hard to steady her voice, clamping down her sobs.
“Oh…” Denji said. He tried to look at her face.
“I wish I had dogs… and a cat… I wish I had something like that…” she moaned.
When Reze climbed onto him that night, Denji’s heart soured and bled, in a pleasurable way, like he was a teenager again, waiting for her to reach into his gut and tear something up. But she didn’t. And the way she touched him was so gentle he began to wonder if she was being apologetic, even though her face was that same, knowing, inviting smile, and nothing about her even hinted at something like remorse. Still, when she put him inside her, when she braced herself against his chest, when she breathed heavily, he looked at her and saw a different woman.
She was fucking something out of him to feed her… and she really was scared he wouldn’t want her to have it. That night, he held her hips and ground into her to show he would give it to her, that he had forgiven her and maybe even forgotten (even though he hadn’t, even though she had forever changed the way he would have sex for the rest of his life and probably the rest of eternity, he was always kissing with the hole she had put in his mouth) and she didn’t have to be afraid like that.
“I like that. It feels good,” he said against her ear when she put her legs around him, pressed up against him. He put a hand on her back, wishing more of her touched more of him.
“Unh,” she’d said in her raw, feminine voice. It sounded a little helpless, like she wasn’t really in control anymore. He liked that so much. He spent the rest of the night trying to make her sound like that again.
---
It had been a tough search for Asa. There were times when she’d lost hope. Many of the public safety veterans had scoffed at her advances, saying they weren’t going to mix business and pleasure with the war devil. Others could not discern the flirting from her usually severe attitude, and fled. And then there was no one else she knew very well.
So she was surprised when it turned out Miri Sugo, of all people, was showing an interest.
She’d asked him on a date at the party. He had talked to her all night, then blushed when she put an arm on him and asked if he had a girlfriend. Okay… she thought. I get it.
He was handsome. He was, it seemed, possibly even smart, in the way that would have gotten him good grades in school. He had a weird and roving attitude that made him pretty sociable, and he was always hanging around Denji trying to persuade him of stuff. Asa did the calculations in her head and decided yes, he was a good catch, and it spoke well of her looks that someone like this could like her so quickly.
Nice.
At the end of their date (Asa had already forgotten where they’d gone. Did it matter? She just wanted to get to the good stuff… these two months were just the prequel to their deaths, anyway) Miri began to tremble, and he leaned in and kissed Asa. He was surprised when Asa kissed back. She hadn’t really shown any outward sensuality up until this point, but she was a good kisser, and staring into her open eyes between kisses, his knees grew weak.
“Can I come in?” She said.
He was trembling when he touched her, he kept asking if it was okay. She had to take off her clothes herself. And his eyes were so large. He fell on his knees and touched the front of her legs and put his lips on her underwear, waiting for her to take that off too. When she unhooked it off of her hips, he sighed like a supplicant. For some reason, he held her hand while he ate her out. Not with interlaced fingers… he held her palm, put a thumb on the back of her hand, like an offering.
She was terribly embarrassed. She kept shuffling, as though she were being watched, watching, her own self watching herself outside of her body. She wasn’t familiar with this kind of attentiveness, this boy being nervous and hopeful and wanting nothing for himself, anything for her. It made her self-conscious at first, then a little disdainful. It was kind of pathetic.
And then she thought about her determination to have real sex… sex with someone who was actually into her. That had to be Miri. He looked at her with eyes like coins, like wells. She’d open up, he would rush in, his eyes would intensify. If she pretended this man wasn’t, for all intents and purposes, a stranger… if she imagined behind his deference a sort of love there… a need to please her not out of the expectations and rituals of pleasure, but out of some sort of life-and-death need for her… pretending like that felt like she was winning over him, successfully tricking him, and at the same time it brought tears of relief to her eyes.
She came. He lapped it up. It tasted salty and sweet.
---
Denji and Asa continued to hang around each other, now in the orbit of new sexual partners. They’d done well in their first week. While Asa never clarified what Miri was to her, they had both made some significant strides towards beating out the other in their competition. Probably.
Asa had only told Denji her point count. She hadn’t elaborated at all, the way Denji had. He was… curious. They went out for Family Burger (Asa had put this food on her bucket list, so they knocked it out in one large group date). The whole night he studied her, sitting in the booth next to Miri, tearing little holes in the lettuce in the burger. Miri’s handsome, searching face often beaming at Denji, then Asa, then Denji again, doing a lot of work to sustain the conversation.
Denji watched Miri’s legs knock against Asa’s. He noticed her eyes flatten and blacken and transform while Miri talked and talked, saw her fingers linger in her mouth. These were all signs of… not of affection, of fucking. They were having full-on sex.
Oh, Denji thought. For some reason, this made him feel panicky. While he normally had no reservations about voyeurism or fantasy, thinking about them while they sat there in front of him pretending not to be having sex felt weirdly gross to him. Maybe because he didn’t like to imagine Miri having sex. Or maybe because he didn’t like to imagine Miri having sex with her.
Weird, he thought, and replaced the idea with a memory from earlier… Reze pulling him into a closet, swallowing his cum, smiling. It was a warm and good flashback, and it made him feel better.
He went with Reze and let Asa have the apartment that night. They went to a movie theater at midnight and realized it was a stupid fucking movie. Then they talked and laughed loudly, running up and down the aisle, and fell on the ground kissing.
“So… was that good?” He asked in her bed that night. He had worried for a long time Reze wasn’t really having fun when she looked like she was.
Reze was wide awake.
“Of course, stupid,” she said, climbing back onto him.
“Ah… really?” he said.
“Yeah,” Reze said. “I really like being with you, Denji. So I have a lot of fun during sex.”
Next morning, Denji came home to a Miri Sugo chattering loudly over breakfast with Asa. As soon as Denji stepped in the door, Miri began talking in that way boys his age always talk to Denji, and suddenly all his softness with Reze slipped away, and he was on guard again. He and Asa exchanged strange, incomprehensible words that must have formed their vocabulary after all the sex they’d had, in private.
Miri was leaving for work, and Asa was staying in. Denji watched as Asa lifted her face up and kissed him. In one swoop, Miri’s hands came to clasp around Asa’s waist. He did not know why he kept watching.
“Jesus, are you finished?” Denji said, and practically shoved the door closed in front of Asa.
“What the fuck, Denji?” Asa asked, hand on her hip.
“Ahh,” he said. “You were getting annoying. Letting the heat out.”
Asa noisily opened the fridge door, took out another bizarrely flavored beer. “Whatever.”
They went their separate ways down the hall. They each cleaned up, one at a time, in their bathroom. They played video games on the couch. Denji helped dry her hair. They ate snacks and talked about the apocalypse. Then they did chores.
Denji, for some reason, wanted to watch her out of the corner of his eye when she left his side.
That night, Asa and Denji tallied up their points again and sat down on the floor of the hall of their tiny apartment, leaning up against the doorframe, facing each other.
“So, did you make Miri your boyfriend?” He asked.
Asa sighed. “Maybe. Is Reze your girlfriend?”
Denji beamed. “Yeah. And she’s, like, totally cool with me getting more girlfriends, too. It’s awesome.”
Asa took a drink of her beer and played with her fingernails. She was quiet for a long time.
“Doesn’t it feel lonely?” She said.
“What?”
“Sex. Doesn’t it make you feel all alone?”
“Uh…” Denji considered. “Not like, lonely. If she’s nice, and she’s really sexy, and she knows what she’s doing, it feels pretty good.”
“It feels good,” Asa said. “But it… it doesn’t…”
And Denji suddenly knew what she was talking about, and it frightened him. He wanted to shut off his brain. He needed to remember all the fucking he’d gotten to do in the right way, like it was worth it.
“It’s supposed to feel better if you know your partner well,” Denji said quietly.
“That doesn’t seem right,” she said slowly.
“Yeah,” he said, breathing through his mouth, his head falling on her knee.
So maybe she wasn’t having great sex with Sugo, that dick… But then Denji had watched her kiss him, and it seemed like she kissed him softly and sensually, her throat moving just a little, her chin raised to his face. So she was that kind of person… the kind of person who would curve up during sex, who could want something from you and make you want it too.
He realized painfully that he had wanted to see her like that. But she wasn’t into it, so… that’s that. Why did he want something he couldn’t have?
“In a way, I’m kind of relieved,” Asa leaned her head against the frame of the door and closed her eyes. “I thought I might be holding you back from getting girls.”
Denji did not like this. “Like how?”
“People think I’m your girlfriend,” she said softly. “And sometimes you act like I am, so people get the wrong idea.”
Denji’s heart plummeted all the way down into his ass. It thumped solidly against the floor, it bounced. “What? No I don’t. And plus, you’re acting like you don’t want me at all — you’re the one who kissed me after we found out we were going to die.”
“That was the heat of the moment. I was drunk,” Asa’s eyes flew open. He liked that — he liked that she was paying attention. He shouldn’t let her get away with this shit any more.
With this latest realization, he felt he knew her… he felt he had the upper hand, he thought he had enough context to know what she was doing, he could see her thoughts cringing away from the light, he knew what she didn’t mean.
“You kissed Sugo in front of me,” Denji said, his foot sliding between Asa’s socked feet.
“Why do you care?” Asa said, swallowing a little nervously. “I thought you wanted to have a million girlfriends. Anyway, we’re competing. You agreed to this.”
“Yeah… I did. I do,” Denji admitted.
Asa was tilting her head to the side prettily, the light through the doorway was pale and bright on her throat. He liked the way her hair was long enough to reach her breasts.
“I want to have sex a million times too,” Asa said, ashamed. “Before I die.”
“That’s good! Me too!” Denji gave her a shit-eating grin. He reached over, twirled the ends of her hair.
She breathed deep. She didn’t look away from him, although her body ached with weirdness and anxiety and uncertainty. What was he doing?
“You… are you flirting with me?” She had to ask.
“No. Uh. Yes,” Denji said absently. He looked up at her like a dog. She saw that his lips were large and curled up over his teeth elegantly, though the corners of his mouth drooped down.
He was being sincere. He was curious, he was affectionate. He wanted her.
It made her sad.
“Miri’s your friend.”
“Aghh… No, he’s not… he wishes he were my friend…” Denji said, but she saw she had already made him back down a little.
He wasn’t as disgusted with men anymore, though he pretended to be. In the time of their separation, men were all Denji had, and he had begun to respect the laws of friendship among them, despite himself. He was apprehensive at the thought of hurting Miri.
He let her hair go. His mouth hung towards the floor.
This was what you wanted, Asa, she thought to herself. You stopped him from being horny and doing something stupid. You aren’t going to fool around with him, because it wouldn’t mean anything if it was with a horndog like him, and if it did mean something it would be super complicated and weird. You kept your dignity, and you didn’t lead him on, and now he’ll never touch you and he’ll get to fuck a lot of other people, which is… which is…
Asa caught his face and kissed him in one long inhale, like she was breathing his face in. He didn’t have time to react, so their teeth clacked loudly when she moved in and pressed her lips against his open mouth, and then she moved and pulled her legs up and shifted her body weight and advanced into him again. His hand flew up, it sunk over the layers of her clothing, her white shirt, her cami, her thick skirt, it fell to her waist.
Denji’s face was so hot Asa had to pull away, her own face flushed and warm and even damp with sweat. His eyes were full of so much drama — disbelief, need, uncertainty, vulnerability — she leant in and kissed him again so she didn’t have to see it.
Their hands moved clumsily. They didn’t know what they were touching.
“Fuuuuck,” he said.
She was pawing frantically, kind of roughly at his dick.
“This counts, I think,” she said. “What we do now, it counts as points to both of us.”
They kissed messily for a while longer on the floor, and then Denji picked her up and took her to bed.
---
This became a pattern.
Entertain dates, guests, boyfriends and girlfriends. Put in appearances at work and at small gatherings of people. Go to their bedroom, take each other’s clothes off, shove hands over each other’s mouths, fuck very slowly and quietly, saying nothing. Kiss often, lose count.
Go back out there. Come home and brag about their sex lives. Tell themselves it’s all good.