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Let's Kill the Night and Go Down in Style

Summary:

Executions—deaths in general—never phase Byakuya. He cannot afford to let the demise of such meaningless, worthless ninety-nine percenters latch in his brain like parasites.

Still, the phantoms of Taka’s and Hifumi’s bodies flash behind his eyelids every time he even blinks. A wild animal might maim and maul and rend and shred, but Celeste maintained herself enough to achieve such a relatively neat wound.

Byakuya wonders what he would have done, could have done, if he’d gotten his teeth into someone squishier last night.

Standing in front of his door, still as busted as he left it, he thinks with a rotten taste in his mouth that he may be the wild animal in this situation.

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

Byakuya wonders a lot after he's outed as a werewolf, and neither Makoto nor Monokuma is quite ready to let the big reveal go.

Notes:

god i lied and i'm back. the brain worms were not cured. help

immediate sequel to the previous fic, which is just as stupid. this one is planned to be even more.... self-indulgent. ugh

the title is a work in progress and the bdsm song i pulled the lyrics from has no relevance to this brain vomit lmfao ive just been listening to it on loop. no smut or sexy here.

again canon events might be crunched or rearranged for my shits and giggles. i'm not editing a great deal

will eventually fuck w the chapter titles. theyre just there for my sanity atm

Chapter 1: After the Trial

Chapter Text

Executions—deaths in general—never phase Byakuya. For his mask to break in the face of such grisly scenes might have been expected, even human, but he considers them the fruit of a successful investigation. The natural resolution to a solved case in Monokuma’s killing game. He cannot afford to let the demise of such meaningless, worthless ninety-nine percenters latch in his brain like parasites. 

Still, the phantoms of Taka’s and Hifumi’s bodies flash behind his eyelids every time he even blinks. Their drenched bodies, the far-flung blood splatters from severed carotid arteries, the deliberate in-and-out punctures. A wild animal might maim and maul and rend and shred, but Celeste maintained herself enough to achieve such a relatively neat wound. 

Byakuya wonders what he would have done, could have done, if he’d gotten his teeth into someone squishier last night. Standing in front of his door, still as busted as he left it, he thinks with a rotten taste in his mouth that he may be the wild animal in this situation. 

He’s only halfway surprised to see Monokuma bound up beside him. Folding his arms, he stares down at the bear, only giving Kyoko, Hina, and Sakura a barest glance when he hears them coming down the hallway. 

“Nothing to say to your headmaster, huh?” Monokuma says. 

Byakuya’s voice feels gummy, even though he long cleaned the blood away. “What could you possibly want now? You got your murders.” 

“You need some more training, you know that? Good dogs show some respect.” The stuffed animal raises his paw, fake claws unsheathed.

Byakuya’s tired leg muscles twitch. It would be so, so easy to kick him. “How many times do you feel the need to make light of my condition? I promise, nobody is laughing.” 

He cackles. “Oh, but I’m laughing! You should see how your eye twitches!” 

“What”—he enunciates against a snarl—“is the point?”

“Oh, just that you’re stuck with your broken door! It was terribly naughty to break it, you know. I can’t reward that kind of behavior.” 

“Fine,” Byakuya says. 

He moves to push inside regardless, but Monokuma tsks. “Friendly reminder, by the way, that it’s still against school rules to sleep outside your room! And you know what happens to bad dogs, don’t you?” 

Byakuya remembers the spears adapting Junko’s body into a pincushion. “Heard,” he says drily. 

When Monokuma leaps away and leaves Byakuya and his budding migraine in peace, he gives the group of silent girls another look. They stood to the side, not speaking a word for or against his defense—not that he expected them to, of course. He didn’t need their input in any case. 

“The fourth floor is open now,” Kyoko says quietly. “Aren’t you coming to investigate?” 

That’s right. Another trial, another execution, another floor. At the same time, a spiked pressure builds behind his eyes, and his limbs are patched together with lead and concrete. The idea of climbing those stairs sets his leg roaring. Finally, hesitantly, he says, “I’m assuming the floor won’t grow legs and walk off overnight. I’ll look later.” 

As much as it degrades him to admit it, Kyoko’s mask rivals his, unmoved and stony. 

“You’re really going to sleep in there still?” Hina asks, and he almost wonders if she sounds worried about him. Impossible. She said it herself; she finds him just as repulsive as he finds her motley crew. 

“You heard the bear,” he says. “I won’t make myself an easy target, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” 

“You don’t look like you could fight off a fly right now,” Sakura says. 

Byakuya shows his teeth but says nothing. The heavy-set exhaustion tells him the brute’s probably right. He can’t waste his time arguing with commoners, anyway. 

“Bring me your toolkit,” Kyoko says suddenly. 

Byakuya blinks at her. His brain is fluffy. “What?” 

“The toolkit Monokuma gave all the boys to encourage killings—do you still have yours? Bring it to me.” 

He can only stare at her a moment, and he goes back in forth in his hazy mind about whether to comply. Finally, he wordlessly slinks inside and returns with the untouched case. Just as silent, she kneels at his door and pulls and prods the hinges into place, screwing them down. She does the same to the chain lock, although it appears a harder task. He finds himself staring off throughout it. It won’t be today that he recollects the pieces of his scrambled mind. 

“Wow, I didn’t know you could do that, Kyoko,” Hina says. He’s not entirely sure why he cares to notice, but her chipper voice sounds flatter than usual. Typical, he thinks—a person like Hina would allow the deaths to eat at her. He blinks, and their bodies reappear in the brief blackness, dripping and gooey with drying blood. 

“It doesn’t hurt to be handy,” she says, standing. Her violet eyes pore into him, burrowing into his black-and-blue skin. “It wouldn’t do to lose another one of us, Byakuya.” 

Is she explaining herself or warning him? He tests the swing of his door quietly, and though it drags a little, nothing seems amiss. He’ll need to examine it later. For now, he narrows his eyes at the girls. “Yes, well... I intend to spend the rest of my day in peace, but I suppose you may harass me if you find something of note. Goodbye.” 

Byakuya retreats inside and closes the door swiftly behind him. He discovers something about the soundproofing must’ve been affected because he hears Hina scoff. “Would it kill him to say ‘thank you’?” 

“Don’t stress over him, Hina.” Sakura. 

“I think that may be the closest thing we’ll get from him.” Kyoko’s voice, far away. They must be down the hall. 

Not that Byakuya cares. He tugs off his blazer and crossover tie and falls into his bed, barely bothering to wiggle his shoes off. 

Chapter 2: Two Days After the Full Moon

Notes:

gay gay homosexual gay

Chapter Text

Byakuya Togami sleeps. He sleeps through the rest of the day, the nighttime announcement. He barely wakes up at three a.m. at the behest of bodily functions, and then he sleeps again through the next morning announcement. If someone rung his doorbell yesterday, he’s none the wiser. 

Now, he reclines in bed, his novel once again a forgotten endeavor on his bedside table. At least his temperature lowered, though he’s always going to run a little warmer than the average human. He drank the last of his water an hour ago, and he can’t lower himself to such depths as imbibing from a faucet. At the same time, his spine glues to the headboard, stubborn legs drawn up to his chest as he embraces them. 

Byakuya should have been the first on the fourth floor. Nothing less, and absolutely not having retired to his bed without even attempting the stairs. His weakness is rancid, and the battery acid taste of it taints the back of his throat no matter how much he swallows. He’s slept too long and somehow not enough. Hot knives prod the back of his head. 

How pathetic. 

When Byakuya finally can’t stand the bile and the churning in his chest, he gingerly climbs out of bed and finds a fresh set of clothes. He’ll need to do his laundry soon, which is still an almost alien concept to him. He spilled blood to win the right to forsake such trivial chores for himself; he’ll have to again, some time soon. Surely he could task Toko with the menial labor, but it’s the genocidal alter who appears without warning he trusts even less than any of the other scraps in his vicinity. For now, he begrudges himself to such necessary drudgery.

Like cooking his own food. He should find something to eat before he ventures upstairs, at least. The hollow panging in his stomach demands it. 

Adjusting his tie at the door—neither fidgeting nor procrastinating—he hears Makoto’s staggered footsteps approaching their hallway. Coming out of the dining hall, maybe. After taking the brunt of Celeste’s attack, his natural gait is stifled, but Byakuya knows its cadence. Regardless of knowing the boy's pace, he reeks of chocolate and… tea? 

He flips the options in his mind, to exit now or hover until Makoto leaves. The latter’s pitifulness makes him so sick he straightens himself one last time and strides out. Confidently, of course, and definitely not slightly limping or cringing at the scalding bright hallway lights. 

“Oh, hey,” Makoto says. 

Dammit. 

Despite everything that’s happened and all of his Byakuya’s barbed dismissals, he still fronts that smile at him, with those imperfect teeth and—are those dimples? No, he doesn’t look hard enough to notice if they are. 

“I was just coming to find you,” Makoto says. 

“Haven’t you bedeviled me enough?” Byakuya asks. His crossed arms are a natural position, just as the sun rises in the east. 

“Hey, no one’s seen you in a while. I at least wanted to see if you were alive.” Makoto glances down at the mug cradled in his hands, almost as if he regrets it. “I made you some tea. Rosehip, right?” 

Byakuya blinks in surprise. Makoto remembered that he likes rosehip tea. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean anything. He questioned Celeste about how she knew he drank the tea in particular yesterday; it was a more or less important detail for the trial. Nothing more meaningful than that. 

“Yes, that’s correct,” he says after a moment. He acquiesces the mug, the warmth melting into the pads of his fingers. Before he can examine it, the floral aroma lures him in. Surely Makoto wouldn’t be smart enough to poison him. Or even smart enough to not poison him. Not here, not like this. The tea is bittersweet and tart, hot and soothing. His tongue hums. 

“Um, I just followed the directions on the box. I hope it’s fine.” 

Byakuya nods. “It’s… acceptable.” 

It’s boxed and bagged tea. It’ll never be anything but substandard. Still, the drink warms him head-to-toe as he allows another sip. 

“That’s good! I was worrying,” Makoto says. And though Byakuya’s eyes close to embrace the tingling in his tonsils, and maybe to take a brief break from the hallway, he hears the smile licking the boy’s words. Suddenly, he clears his throat. “H-hey, so, I was wondering, when’s the last time you ate something?” 

Byakuya scrunches his face. When was the last time he had sustenance? Was it really the curry? 

“All right, if you have to think about it, it’s been way too long.” Makoto gestures behind him. “Hina knew I liked the curry and made more. Maybe you should come eat some.” 

“I can manage myself. I’ll have you know I was heading to the kitchen either way,” Byakuya says. He guards the steaming mug as he (doesn’t) limps down the hall, and he only glances back once as Makoto follows him. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Byakuya has a little more faith in the curry’s safety, at least in terms of poison, after he watches Makoto eat from the pot with a spoon like some feral creature. Swallowing his uncertainty, he prepares a modest portion of the meat and rice despite the roaring that’s kickstarted in his stomach. Meanwhile, Makoto pours himself a cup of chocolate milk. Typical. 

“I’m sure you’ll say people of your status don’t drink chocolate milk or whatever,” Makoto says, “but, still, you want some ‘fore I put it away?” 

Byakuya turns away from Makoto and his milk mustache. “You should have listened to the one intelligent thought you’ve had in weeks,” he says. He hesitates and adds, “I’m intolerant.” 

“To milk?” 

“To theobromine. Chocolate.” 

“Oh! That sucks.” 

He’s not sure why he told Makoto. Neither is he sure why he lingers a moment on how the boy wipes his mouth or why his nose twitches at the cocoa smell he’s grown to love and hate in equal measure. He pushes it all clear to the back of his mind and returns to the dining hall, settling in “his” small table. After a few minutes, Makoto pads after him, taking a seat at the larger and longer lunch table. He sits stiffly with his milk, grunting softly. 

Byakuya eats slowly, gracefully, and coolly, not succumbing to the appetite the smell of food flared. Across the way, Makoto sips thoughtfully, and shortly, he asks, “Is that a werewolf thing?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“S-sorry—I mean, the chocolate thing. Can you not have it ‘cause you’re a werewolf?” 

Byakuya scoffs. “As if I am some lowly animal.” He drinks the last of the cooling tea and looks away. “The intolerance only happened after the bite, so… I assume that’s the case. It and the others I developed aren’t severe, but there are many foods unworthy of suffering the consequences, however mild.” 

Makoto chuckles lightly. “Chocolate milk’s up there on the unworthy scale, then?” 

“Make no mistake—it’s far beyond the scale’s scope.” 

“All right, all right, what is ‘worthy,’ then?” Makoto asks, leaning forward. 

Byakuya pretends not to notice how his face screws up. “Curry, for one, although naturally not this commoner variety. I’m accustomed to much higher quality proteins. Alas.” He takes a pointed bite of a beef chunk, but his mouth waters all the same. “Our chef may use wagyu in her curry dishes, but I dare say at times that it’s a waste of such a succulent grade of meat. I find it’s best briefly seared and mostly raw. A treat, of course.” 

“Wow, Byakuya, I didn’t know you were so into food,” Makoto says. He’s not taken a drink of his chocolate concoction in a while, hunched over the table with his chin propped on his hand. 

“Ah.” He feels his cheeks warm. “I… may be hungry.” 

Again, why is he telling Makoto, this insignificant loser, all of this? His face sours, especially against the heat in his neck and how Makoto cradles his wounded chest as he tentatively laughs. How much worse would the attack have been if Byakuya hadn’t intercepted, right mind or not? 

Dead. Makoto would’ve been dead. Celeste aired her intentions like a bomb. 

And still, he wonders why he hadn’t taken the kill. All signs point to having the opportunity. Did he really fight off Celeste and just leave Makoto alive? 

With these thoughts dampening the unwarranted blush on his face, he polishes off the rest of the curry and rice in silence. Makoto, for once, takes the hint, draining his cup in one swig and leaning back in his chair without another interruption. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆


“So…” Makoto starts, slanted on the kitchen counter as Byakuya dries his bowl and mug. 

“Don’t waste my time, Makoto. Get out with it,” he says. It’s a reflexive bite. A hard-programmed remark sewn into his repertoire of quick responses. It’s much more natural than the sappy back-and-forth in the dining hall, but Makoto almost seems dismayed. 

“I was just wondering if you’d been to the fourth floor. You kinda vanished after the trial yesterday, not that I blame you,” he says after a moment. 

“I haven’t,” Byakuya says. He sets the pieces back into the cabinets, the porcelain clinking, and turns back to the boy. “Have you?” 

“No… I went to sleep. It was all so much, all that yesterday, you know? Kyoko had just told me you were MIA. I wouldn’t have known.” 

Byakuya hums. It’s a feeling he relates to and frankly still experiences, an exhaustion buried down to his very bones. He doesn’t say so, though. 

Makoto scratches his cheek. “So, did you want to, um, go check it out with me?” 

“Oh, absolutely not,” Byakuya says, crossing his arms against his whirling alarm. His eyes stubbornly latch where he knows one of Makoto’s bandages adhere to his light brown skin. “You can’t sit down without moaning. You’ll only slow me down.” 

Makoto flinches. “Look, it’s really not that bad, I promise.”

He moves to lift his hoodie up, and Byakuya sharply adverts his gaze with a scoff. “I don’t need a demonstration, thank you. I can’t stop you if insist on padding after me, but don’t expect me to wait around for you. I’m a busy man.” 

“I know, I know,” Makoto says. 

Byakuya moves slowly up the stairs, and he may have his arm extended just in case Makoto falters. It would be a hassle to have a body stuck on the staircase if he were to fall. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Two locked doors. Nondescript and garish classrooms and bathrooms. An office full of oddly thriving orange flowers. A music hall which he feels the inclination to linger in, even if for a moment. 

It’s the chemistry lab that Byakuya and Makoto find themselves in the longest. The room is dreary steel, and its acrid smell sears his nose long before they step foot inside. Beakers and graduated cylinders crowd the table, but a cabinet stocked with various chemicals catches his eye most. 

“Dammit, look at all this poison,” he says. He opens the section to rifle through the selection, but nothing seems used or otherwise out of place. The protein powders and supplements have been raided though—certainly Hina and Sakura. 

“Do you think we should… I don’t know, get rid of it?” Makoto asks him. He stands a respectful distance off; Byakuya notices a pallor sucking the color from his warm face. 

“Sit down, Naegi,” Byakuya says. When Makoto finally does, he sighs. “Pray tell, do what with them, exactly? I can’t say we have the ability to safely and properly dispose of all these different chemicals. Anyway, if someone has decided to kill, they will kill—poison or no.” 

“I guess you’re right,” he says quietly. 

“Naturally.” 

Byakuya blinks away the stinging tears building in the corners of his eyes, but he finally has to retreat from the pungent fetor. Makoto follows him like a lost puppy back into the warehouse, where he fetches a fresh supply of bottled water. No way to escape. No indication, no hints. Just more literal locked doors and more questions. 

“Are you going back to sleep?” Makoto asks when they near their dorms. 

“If you must know, I’m going to read,” Byakuya says. It would be simple to slam the door in Makoto’s face, but he hovers graciously. 

“Right,” Makoto says. He scratches his cheek, tugs on the collar of his hoodie. 

Byakuya grimaces. “For crying out loud, stop that squirming. What’s the matter?” 

“Sorry, sorry. I was just, you know, thinking about a few nights ago. I mean, how could I not?” 

A dark fist clasps Byakuya’s heart, and a storm cloud brews behind his glasses. Maybe he can slip the boy sweet little pearls of information when he catches Byakuya off guard, which shouldn’t even be possible because a Togami should ever be on guard, but not this. “You should certainly stop,” he says sharply. 

Makoto cards a hand through his wild hair. “I’m just worried about you. I know you hate that—I know you hate me.” 

His words are a hot iron slammed into his face, although Byakuya is sure he keeps his face stone cold. Of course he doesn’t hate Makoto. The boy’s a run-of-the-mill nothing; he’s not worth such strong emotions. 

Why does his throat feel so strangled? 

Makoto continues: “But I’m here for you, okay? We’re in this together, all of us.” 

“How… saccharine,” Byakuya finally says. There’s a moment where his tongue bristles with more, where there’s a fire stoked between his teeth, but he tempers his lips closed. He can let Makoto have this, just this once. 

It doesn’t matter. All of them are going to have to die for Byakuya to graduate. And he is going to graduate, he tells himself, eventually. If Makoto can still convince himself that they’re friends, that it’s going to be okay, that they’re all going to get out of here, then he is going to die. 

But for now, Makoto can have this. 

Chapter 3: The Next Motive

Notes:

a werewolf-flavored reveal of sakura. next chapters should be more... interesting, i hope

Chapter Text

Byakuya keeps to himself, and his endeavor largely succeeds this time. He finishes the long-shelved mystery novel, rehydrates, and tries to push the events of that dastardly lunar phase behind him. No one talks about it. Not in his wide earshot, in any case. Toko and/or Genocide Jill lingers outside his door a few times, but she disperses within an hour, leaving him generally enough time to recuperate and recollect the serrated fragments of his broken pride. He doesn’t even see Makoto much after they recover Alter Ego and the information it cracked from the files, and that his scarcity doesn’t twist a steak knife in his chest at all. 

Fixed on the mirror, Byakuya runs his fingers over his smooth immaculate face and tosses the disposable razor. His eyes shine back at him, perfectly pale blue like translucent winter ice, not a lick of anything feral. His teeth are round and straight and white, his nails manicured and not overgrown with savage tips. When he runs his fingers through his drying hair, he only smells clean lavender, nothing earthy or animal. 

Byakuya is back to normal, if he ignores the persistent ache in his thigh and the yellowing sick bruise on his shoulder. He’s right on time, naturally; when Monokuma flickers onto the monitor in the main room, he’s not in the slightest bit surprised. 

What does set his alarm off is the urgency in the bear’s announcement, and he frowns while shrugging on his blazer to congregate with his involuntary peers. Toko accompanies him intimately, and she only swoons when he ventures a growl at her. Splendid. 

As he nears the award room, the crashing smell nearly bowls him over. It’s not Toko’s allium malodor or general poor teenage hygiene. It’s like acetone and cayenne, stinging his eyes and nose. Sweat and chemicals that stick to his tongue. 

Fear. 

His body responds in kind with a kick of his pulse, and he pockets his hands to run his thumbnail against his fingers. He finds Kyoko, Sakura, and Hina already inside, and Hiro jogs behind him. Byakuya slips inside so he can avoid contact with the man. He stands aside, wrinkling his nose. “You mangy lot reek, you know that?” 

“Yay. He’s back to normal,” Hina says flatly, but she largely ignores him to lean into Sakura, and Kyoko doesn’t spare him a single glance. 

He scoffs and knocks his back into the wall, subtly taking weight off his leg. Sakura rears over everyone in the room, steely, composed. An unwavering wall that props up the smaller woman beside her. All the same, he almost thinks he can pinpoint the worst of the fear to her direction, although his wolfish nose has apparently never been too keen. Celeste’s hidden existence proves this needling fact to him sourly. 

He glances over as the last of them enters his range. Makoto. He barely has a moment to catch his breath before Monokuma ejects himself from the stage. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road!” 

“You’re about to give us your next motive presentation, aren’t you?” Byakuya says. He pushes off the wall to stalk closer to the bear; it may or may not put him closer to Makoto as well. 

“Hmm?” 

“You got us all together to present another motive, right?” 

The others babble in myriad levels of horror, but Sakura and Makoto stand resolutely, or at least quietly. Makoto’s heart rate is higher than the Burj Khalifa. 

“No, no… No, no, no, no, no, no! That’s not it at all!” Monokuma says.

Byakuya narrows his eyes and cuts a second to Makoto. The boy’s cheeks blanch, fists clenched at his sides. 

“We’re not here to talk about motive. The reason I gathered you all here is so that I could get rid of my grudge!” He stomps his stuffed foot, and though his stitched face scarcely changes, Byakuya feels the heat of the glower on his skin. 

“We have a grudge against you, of course,” Kyoko says, “but I don’t recall you having a grudge against us.” 

“I told you yesterday, didn’t I? An eye for an eye, a fang for a fang.” 

And though it sounds at first like a jab at Byakuya’s condition, the bear isn’t looking at him at all. 

“Will you just get to the point and tell us what the hell you’re talking about?” he asks, swallowing the snarl so his voice is deceptively clear. 

Now those mismatched eyes fix on him, the temper smothered in a faux giggle. “Well, well, Byakuya. You’ve already told everyone how one of you might be working as a spy, right? Unfortunately for you, they all worried about the werewolf instead.”

Even manicured as they are, his thumbnail slices into his finger. All around him, fear and pummeling heart rates make his head spin. “Yeah, so, what about it?”

“Well, today, I’m going to tell you about that spy!” 

Byakuya clenches his arm so tightly tears spring in his eyes. Makoto hugs himself, head bowed. 

“So, guess what. The spy is actually Sakura Ogami!” 

Byakuya swallows glass. 

Hina recoils like a struck dog. 

Sakura stands solid. 

Makoto doesn’t look up. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Byakuya’s classmates squabble over the whys and hows, but he looks at Sakura soundlessly. How she maintains herself despite the rug-pull betrayal and bombardment of fury. The woman is steady, immutable. Coasting out hollow apologies like they mean anything. 

Makoto spits out defenses just as easily, and Byakuya can’t hold his tongue any longer as he justifies her with “hostage” nonsense. He spins on the boy, twinge in his leg damned. “Which means Sakura isn’t our enemy. She’s a friend”—he spits the word—“who we can trust without question. Is that it?” 

“Byakuya,” Makoto says quietly. 

He scoffs. “This werewolf business has scrambled what sense you had left. This isn’t some fairytale where we all get to live happily ever after. She was the mastermind’s tool. Your wretched trust may go far, but you absolutely cannot trust someone like that.” 

To his shock, Hiro backs him up. 

He refolds his arms. “How can we even be sure she really did betray the mastermind? Maybe this is a double-bluff, and she’s still following the mastermind’s orders like a puppet.” 

“Sakura would never do that!” Hina asserts. She’s as stubborn and doe-eyed as Makoto. They’re both going to get gutted. 

“Okay, then Sakura… if you have really cut ties with the mastermind, tell us who they really are.” 

And she can’t. Of course she can’t. 

“That just makes you all the more suspicious,” he says, and he can’t help the smile tugging his face. Oh, how bored he grew in his room, even if it was necessary to restore some semblance of normalcy. The blood in his ears. The flame stoking on his tongue. He particularly enjoys not being under the microscope himself this time. 

“No, you have to believe her—” 

“Shut up,” he snaps at Hina. “I’m not finished questioning her. Next question. What’s this about a ‘promise?’ What did the mastermind order you to do?” 

Sakura closes her eyes, teeth set under his lips. “I was told… to kill one of my friends.” 

He bares his teeth at the f-word her ilk all so adore. “So even now, you’ve taken aim on our lives.” 

“You’re wrong!” All of 5 feet and some tall, Hina squares up in front of him. “I’m telling you, Sakura would never do that!” 

Toko squirms. “Y-you don’t have to yell—we can h-hear you just fine. Don’t you have an i-inside voice?”

“It’s because you’re not listening to me!” 

Byakuya grits his teeth against the pitch of her voice, and he loathes to admit he backs up a few steps. Although he fights to never stray from the traitor, he finds his own disloyal attention slicing to Makoto too often. He knew. He’d seen Sakura and Monokuma and had, evidently, told no one, based on the mysterious flash he’d caught on Kyoko’s face. Had he known for what Monokuma summoned them?

When Sakura strides out of the gym, Hina lurches to nearly follow her when the nighttime announcement plays. Byakuya hums. “Well,” he says, throat dry, “it’s nighttime. We should all go to bed.”

Hina blubbers something about Sakura. It all smells rancid. 

“There’s nothing left to discuss.” 

Byakuya glares down at her. 

“She’s our enemy.”

Chapter 4: One Day After the Motive

Notes:

local queer ignores storytelling fundamentals to better cater to his brain worms. more at nine

Chapter Text

Makoto is late. 

Byakuya reclines in his seat in the dining hall, finally sipping on the civet coffee the boy had brought him. His vile condition renders him overly sensitive to stimulants, but the drink’s lower caffeine content means he can somewhat comfortably tip the mug back to his lips. Hina lours at him from across the room. She’s probably willing the porcelain to rupture in his face; maybe for him to choke to death on the luxury drink. 

He crosses his leg with a small grunt. Of course, he’s not worried about Makoto. Someone of his blood doesn’t worry, and especially not about a commoner boy. 

Still… Byakuya can’t deny how thoughts of him occupied his mind last night. How he defended Sakura, seemed to really believe in her forced hand. Her farce of an apology and declaration of revenge against the mastermind. 

Would have Makoto defended him in such a way? 

He clenches his fingers around the mug’s handle. It’s pathetic, how his thoughts wander into unsolicited territory. Makoto is nothing. Period. 

And so why do his thoughts still flutter to the boy?

In any case, he’s surely fine, and Byakuya’s proven correct when he tilts his head toward the awkward cadence and chocolate smell approaching the dining hall. 

“He’s alive, Hiro.” He gestures loosely toward the entrance. 

The eccentric man jumps. “What? How do you know? Can you smell him or something?” 

Byakuya pointedly takes a long drink as Makoto enters. The boy pauses, scratching his cheek as he examines the assembled crew. When was the last time he and Toko attended their morning “meetings?” 

“Makoto, you okay, man?” Hiro asks, hustling over to him. 

“Um, I mean, I’m sore, I guess. But everything’s healing fine. What’s wrong? Why are Toko and Byakuya here?” 

“They’re ‘taking refuge.’” Hina spits the phrase like a furious cat. 

It’s almost cute how Makoto’s face scrunches into confusion. 

“Don’t make that stupid face,” he says. “We have to protect ourselves from the mastermind’s tool.” 

Makoto grimaces. “Wait, you don’t mean…” 

“Sakura.” Hina’s voice is hard-edged. “They’re talking about Sakura, like she’s some kind of… plague.”

“Tch. Get it through your soggy skull,” Byakuya says. “Sakura is a traitor set out to take our lives. Where she is, I plan to not be.”  

He feels Makoto’s eyes turn to him, green and pretty and… disappointed. Byakuya sets his teeth. Remember what you said? Makoto is weak. Soft. His continued existence is a fluke. His opinion doesn’t matter, even as something in Byakuya aches, and he wonders if he may be the weak one. He shouldn't be feeling this way. 

A Togami isn’t weak. 

“Why…” Hina starts. Her face flushes with angry tears. “Why do you hate her so much? We all know your dirty secret, and no one’s treating you like this.” 

Byakuya’s temperature rises about two degrees. “Don’t you dare speak of that,” he says tightly, standing to meet the woman as she stalks closer to him. “My abhorrent condition has nothing to do with the inherent fairness of this killing game. The scale should be even for all players, and the mastermind’s spy disrupts the balance.” 

“That’s a stupid reason!” 

“Stupid? This is a killing game.”

“It is stupid! You’re a stupid idiot!” Her adrenaline spoils the air around them, setting his heart rate on fire. His bruised muscles twitch. 

Kyoko intercepts, saying something about how this infighting is what Monokuma wants. Byakuya mostly tastes iron in the back of his throat. Static buzzes behind his eardrums. 

“Are you still going to stand there and argue like children?” she asks. 

“No, th-that’s not what I’m trying to do at all. Just… how can I get you guys to believe in Sakura again?” Hina says. 

“Well, if she really can beat the mastermind like she said, that’d go a long way,” Hiro says. 

“Idiot!” Hina says. “You’d really ask her to do something so dangerous? What if something terrible happens to her?” 

“It wouldn’t matter,” Byakuya snaps. 

“What?” Hina’s voice is ice. 

“If Sakura died, it’d be one less person for the mastermind to control. It would resolve this whole situation, wouldn’t it?” Byakuya fights for a deep breath. This temper of his is unwarranted, vile. His lips hum. 

“H-hold on, Byakuya—” Makoto. 

He forges on, determined to blaze past the tugging in his chest at the boy’s interjection. “Come on, Makoto. Her death would mean one less person to worry about in this killing game in general. I’d have no problem with that.” His eyes turn back to Hina, narrowed into slits. “Would you?” 

She’s fast. 

Her slap is fierce enough to jerk his head and clatter his glasses to the floor. The strength hidden beneath her tracksuit sears his skin. An animal snarl shreds his throat, and he cups his cheek, glaring at her as he pants. His head swims—his body winds tight—his chest twists.

“I love her, you bastard. I thought maybe there’d be some part of you that understood, after what you did for Makoto.” Hina’s inhale is as ragged as his own. “But you’re just the same horrible person. No, you’re a monster. Being a werewolf’s got nothing to do with that. You should’ve died instead.” 

Byakuya’s tongue won’t form words. Blackness crowds the edges of his vision, and something rumbles in his throat. Hina doesn’t back down, fury patching her cheeks red, and it takes him far too long to acknowledge Makoto tentatively nudging his shoulder.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he says quietly. It doesn’t pierce the fog rolling into his brain in thick waves. 

Byakuya,” he says, tugging now. “It’s time to go.” 

Byakuya spits out blood, pink and foamy, and forces his attention to Makoto. His blurry face swims in his vision. He still tastes metal. Clenching his eyes closed, he relinquishes himself to being led away. He stumbles with the grace of a newborn fawn as his legs spasm. 

He doesn’t open his eyes until he senses the red light of the dorm hallways through his strained lids. Gasping, he throws himself against the wall and slides onto the floor, burying his head in a shield of arms. He chases down his breath in greedy swallows, willing his bulleting heart to slow, for the heat twisting his insides to calm. He faintly hears Makoto settle beside him, feels his nervous, light hand on his back. His voice is quiet and taut. “Yeah, yeah… Take deep breaths.... Calm down… You got some crazy eyes back there, man.” 

Byakuya sucks in air obediently, and as his heart submits to a slower pace, nausea washes over him. He groans softly, leaning his head back into the wall. When he wipes his mouth, the back of his hand smears a neat line of blood. His pulse jumps again when he courses his tongue over his teeth to find fangs instead. The soreness hits him square in the mouth. “Dammit,” he rasps. 

“Byakuya, what was all that?” Makoto asks. 

He’s abruptly aware of how close the boy is. Their shoulders and knees brush; his hand still lays on Byakuya’s back. Every breath he takes is infused—tainted—with spearmint toothpaste and chocolate. He jerks away and climbs up the wall to stand, rubbing his bare face with a huff. 

“I just don’t understand you,” Makoto says quietly. 

“Good.” Byakuya growls it, and he feels sicker than before. He doesn’t look back at Makoto. “I don’t need you to ‘understand’ me.” 

Makoto doesn’t stop. He never stops trying, does he? “Sometimes you’re just… just a guy. You let your walls down a little and you talk to me about curry or open up about your past and save my life and then—a-and then sometimes it’s like a switch flips and you say and do the most horrible stuff.” 

He sneers as a hollow cracks in his sordid chest. “If I’m so horrible,” he says, “then why the hell do you keep chasing me around and peddling your drivel like a snake oil salesman?” 

“Gee, I don’t know, Byakuya—maybe I thought we could be friends.” 

His chest hurts. His whole body pangs like he’s hooked into an electrical socket. “I think you need to polish up your listening skills. How many times have I told you it’s thoughts like that that’ll get you killed?” 

“That’s the thing,” Makoto says. “You’ve said that a lot, and sometimes I wondered why you’d care if I died based on how you act. But I think you do care. I noticed how you helped me up and down the stairs earlier. Told me to sit down when I felt lightheaded. And, you know, broke down a door to save me.” 

Makoto pauses for too many heartbeats, looking for his breath. Byakuya can’t find any words of his own. His tongue is glued down with a sinking, weighted despair. 

Finally, he continues with a sigh too old for a high schooler. “That’s the Byakuya Togami I’m talking to here, okay? I wanna be your friend, I wanna be here for you, but I don’t want you to keep treating us like this. We need to work together to get out of here. At least be a little—I don’t know—civil.” 

Byakuya inhales sharply, but for some reason he can’t catch his breath no matter how many of them he attempts. Something wet stings his cheek, and with a surge of nausea and dread, he thinks it may not be sweat. Why the hell is he crying? 

He wipes his face discreetly. “Maybe it’s for the better, then, if you stop chasing these cloying dreams of yours,” he says slowly. “Byakuya Togami has no friends. Not in his personal life, and certainly not in a game of life and death.” 

“Byakuya.” 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “A person of my status cannot afford to have friends. We mingle for business interests and shallow displays of goodwill. But none of it’s real, and you can never really trust a smile. That’s one of the first things you have to learn.” He shifts to holding himself, trying pitifully to contain the swell rising up his throat. “You’d be eaten alive, Naegi.” 

“Maybe…” Makoto starts quiet, then drops off as he treads a little closer. “Maybe you’re right.” 

“I am.” 

“But I don’t know why you can’t, you know, try.” 

Byakuya grits his teeth and relishes the renewed ache. “We will never be friends, Makoto Naegi.” 

“Because I’m just a commoner,” he says quietly. 

“Because I’m me, and you’re you… the Ultimate Lucky Student, always going on and on about your friends and hope and love.” He ducks his head. Shameful. “Someone like the Ultimate Affluent Progeny doesn’t believe in anything of the sort. You should stay with the people who understand the sentimentalism you huck out of your mouth.” 

Makoto’s quiet, but Byakuya hears his heartbeat almost louder than ever. He wants to press it against his cheek, feel its thrum through his bones. What is that? 

“Are you trying to… protect me?” Makoto finally asks. 

“You can rationalize it however you need to,” Byakuya replies. It’s a battle to steady his voice. The crack in his chest has expanded steadily into a cavern. He’s thirsty; his head pounds all over again. “I’ll leave you to it.” 

Makoto doesn’t stop him from slinking away. He slams the door behind him, and when he reaches the bathroom, he slips back down to the floor. It’s undignified, but he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and wars back a flood of tears. 

Byakuya loses. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

When Byakuya reluctantly leaves his room again that day, he finds Kyoko at the end of the hall, eyes closed in contemplation. He glances the opposite direction and considers going the long way around to the kitchen. 

“Byakuya,” she says, slitting her eyes open. 

He paints on a disinterested face—he definitely didn’t jump. “Do you make a hobby out of it, loitering around in random corners?” he asks. 

“I wanted to ask you something,” she says, ignoring his comment. “Would I be right in saying that you don’t put much stock into emotions?”

He had cried. He had cried until he gagged and the cavern in his chest still never even began to seal over.

“Yes, that’s right,” he says slowly. 

“Right, then…” She nods slowly. “I mostly wanted to warn you—that attitude is going to come back and bite you some day soon. Hard. And, for the record, I’m waiting for Makoto, if you really want to know.” 

The lump in his throat doubles. “Great, thanks,” he manages, all his defensive snark falling flat. He grits his teeth and walks past her resolutely. 

When Byakuya makes the return trip, she’s gone. In her place is the faint whiff of chocolate. 

Chapter 5: The Next Trial

Chapter Text

Byakuya lounges in his room and doesn’t brood following his numerous altercations. In ordinary circumstances, he’d prefer the library proper for reading through his poached stack of books, but with that traitorous brute roaming the halls? No, he’s much better holed up. 

He dodges Toko and Genocide Jill in equal measure with general success, and he’s even better at avoiding Makoto. None of them come to harangue him personally, although he finds a pair of his glasses outside his door with a slapdash note. 

 

I forgot to give these back to you 

- Makoto 

 

He doesn’t even have above average handwriting.

And, still, Byakuya finds himself too often needing to reread a sentence, a paragraph, or entire page after letting his mind stray. More often than not, against his will, he’s tugged into wandering down the different paths his conversation with Makoto could’ve taken. What could it have been if he’d surrendered to the decrepit ideal of “friendship?” 

Would it have cured the aching hollow in his ribs? 

To his alarm, he ponders Kyoko’s warning a little less often than he maybe should. Was her mentioning his lack of emotional consideration a threat of some kind? He cannot entirely fathom what she might be planning there, but he’s already keeping an eye on her. Or an ear, anyway, through the shoddy soundproofing of his room. 

Are you trying to protect me? Makoto had asked him. 

He huffs and turns the page back to the beginning of the chapter. 

Makoto’s demeanor is entirely alien to someone like Byakuya. Even after facing so much death, he’s retained a visage that probably should’ve been impossible for the average plebian such as himself. Not that Byakuya is bothered himself (severed arteries, gooey blood, clean bites), but regardless of social class, it would be for the better if they kept to their own. Makoto would be happier, sticking to his classmates who had the time to consider the saccharine concept of friendship. And even more than friendship—love

Byakuya remembers Hina’s choice of words with a sneer, shivering with disgrace at his temper and the utter mortification that nearly erupted fur and full fangs. It’s not an entirely foreign concept to him: the bittersweet curling in his stomach for his late mother; the icy claws that silently clenched his throat as he watched his butler’s kidnap for Monokuma’s first motive. Love, though, for an utterly unrelated person with no obligations—a Togami does not believe in those fairytales. Temporary infatuation that plagues the peasant mind like all their other mercurial fantasies, maybe. Even if such love exists, he’s not destined for that picayune pipe dream. 

Togamis don’t love. They strategically implant for biological success, nothing more. Every move, every action, measured and calculated. 

Byakuya tenderly brushes the gargantuan contusion on his shoulder, squinting at the amber book’s fading print. Its cloth cover frays even under his delicate fingers, and he turns every brittle page with utmost care, no matter how frustrated he grows at his mind’s ventures. 

Reigniting licks of pain in the bruise spirits him away again. In a different body, in a different mind, he fought off Celeste and didn’t steal her kill for himself. 

He can imprison thoughts of Celeste’s slimy deception. He can’t let himself linger too much on her setup. She played within the killing game’s rules, even though she failed. The Ultimate Gambler abided by her title and lost. 

It’s his decision to play outside the point of the killing game that he can’t so easily compartmentalize. He can say it was the animal’s choice, but the choice still, plainly, makes no sense. Nothing should’ve stopped him from shredding Makoto. 

Byakuya sets the book aside and falls back into bed, staring hollowly at the ceiling as his stomach cramps and that damned hollow between his ribs frays like the corners of an old book. His legs, his whole body, cramp. He needs to get out of this godforsaken room. 

Byakuya retraces and scours the entirety of the fourth floor again, alone this time. The flowers. The interior design disaster classrooms. The music hall and the chemistry lab that almost makes his nose bleed. 

He lingers over the poisons, noting the many compounds of arsenic. What ever a school laboratory needed so much arsenic for, he could never imagine—they were almost certainly planted by the mastermind. It’s the sulfur and ammonia compounds that fill his sinuses the worst. He escapes the floor, covering his nose and nowhere closer to any answers. Not about the school, and not about the ache reverberating through his bones. 

When Sakura slides a note under his door asking him to meet her in the rec room, he doesn’t hesitate. 

He shreds it and takes a nap. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Byakuya’s awake before the body discovery announcement. He pauses for its duration, listening with closed eyes before unceremoniously downing the rest of the rosehip tea and abandoning the sheet music he’d been studying at the table. 

Genocide Jill “greets” him at his door. Joyous day. 

Hina allows him inside the recreation room with the grace of a warden granting inmates a single hour outside of solitary confinement. She accuses one of them—Byakuya, Toko, or Hiro—in no uncertain terms, righteous fury barbing every word and sizzling every tear that dares track down her face. 

Love. 

It tastes sickly sweet, and just like chocolate, it makes his heart thud too quickly. 

Not eager to be assaulted again, he crouches a respectable distance from the behemoth’s body, following his nose to the sulfuric smell that traces around the room. There: yellow powder on her shoe. 

He narrows his eyes, tracking them up to the tangy copper smell of blood dribbling from her mouth. There’s more, matting the back of her head and splattered next to the magazine rack. Minute shards of broken glass bottles crunch under his soles. His adversaries chatter around him, but he pointedly ignores them all, Makoto especially. 

Under the sulfur and the blood, he notes another odor seeping off her. It’s a vaguely garlicky smell, and he closes his eyes and thinks back to the poisons squared away in the chemistry laboratory. If he recalls correctly, the unusual aroma might be a symptom of arsenic toxicity.

So, someone poisoned the brute. 

Makoto comes to ask him about the note, and he answers frankly. Why would he ever expose himself in such a way? He’s nothing like Makoto, blindly following random letters to his near death. 

Despite his truthfulness, Makoto looks hesitant to accept his word. Good, Byakuya thinks. He’s learning. 

The fact that the uncertain, distrustful stare is directed at him doesn’t hurt at all. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Byakuya rears over his podium, smoothing wrinkles out of his blazer and hoping it’ll soothe the constricting snake around his lungs all the same. He should be excited to stand here again in full control, especially having pinned down a pretty damn good suspect. 

He glances at Hina, shuttering his gaze down at her sneakers. Very few people still alive in this room choose such childish footwear, and Makoto’s feet are too large to have made the footprints in the chemistry laboratory. 

She played a pretty good game, he thinks, sizing her up. The crocodile tears were especially impressive. Everyone bought her spun-up story about “love.” 

But not Byakuya. And he’s going to take her down. 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

“Wait, hold on… You’re moving too fast!” 

How had this happened? 

Byakuya has her. Hina even confessed. They had their killer. This case’s over and done. Why the hell are Makoto and Kyoko pushing?

The protein powder, disgusting as it is, threatens to come back up twice as vile. He leans over his podium, fingers white he clenches it so hard. How can she know what he doesn’t? 

This makes no sense. Deforming into a monster and howling at the moon every month makes more sense than this.

“You’re saying she drank it… knowing what it was?” He tastes traces of sulfur in his sinuses. “Such a ridiculous fiction is…” 

“Exactly what happened,” Kyoko asserts. 

Sakura went to the laboratory. Sakura spilled the poison on the floor and on her shoe. 

Sakura drank the poison. 

Hina confesses over and over, insists she poisoned the woman, and Monokuma looks on, paws held to his mouth in a quiet giggle. Byakuya growls and focuses on Makoto, on his thin eyebrows and the thumb pressed to his chin in thought. His foundation, the entire Earth itself, feels shifted under Byakuya’s feet, unsteady and constantly roiling as if under tectonic attack. He needs the podium to stay upright. 

“The person who killed Sakura…” Makoto says, “was Sakura herself.” 

Suicide. 

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it any more than I can fly!” Genocide Jill says. 

“I can’t believe it either. Or rather, I don’t want to believe it,” Makoto says. “But when you really think about it, everything matches up.” 

Sakura got the poison. Sakura barricaded herself so no one could stop her from drinking it… 

“…all so she could take her own life,” Makoto says softly. 

Byakuya’s head thrums with static. 

“The empty bottle of poison rolled around the locked room until we came and opened it,” Kyoko says. “At that point, someone grabbed the bottle and snuck it out of the room. That was you, wasn’t it, Hina?” 

The accused woman makes a broken noise. 

“You did it to throw off the investigation, right?” 

Byakuya swallows sulfur-flavored protein powder over and over. Why? Why, why, why, why? It’s the unbroken rhythm thrusting chisels in his head as Kyoko and Makoto speak. The courtroom tilts in his vision. 

Hina undermined the investigation, knowing full well it would mean her death. Everyone’s deaths.

Makoto details the case, gentle and yet so confident. Some fragile, fraying cord—whatever scraps of it had been holding the pieces of her together—snaps, and she wails, collapsing over her stand. It’s prey and predator, fury and pain. Unadulterated visceral agony that even he recognizes. 

But she’s not hurt, not on the outside. Nothing pierced her, impaled her, struck her. 

Hina weeps. 

“That’s… what happened?” he rasps. “But Makoto, how did you—h-how were you able to uncover the truth? The truth that even I couldn’t discern?” 

It made no sense. None of this makes sense

“You still haven’t realized,” Kyoko says quietly. “We don’t all act according to calculations and cost-benefit diagrams. That’s what makes us so complicated,” She raises her head tall. “That’s what you don’t understand, and that’s why you couldn’t solve this case.” 

Byakuya almost retches. 

“Didn’t I tell you?” Kyoko says. “When you dismiss other people’s feelings, it’ll always come back to bite you in the end.”

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

They vote Sakura guilty for her own death, and Byakuya asks Hina why. 

“If the truth hadn’t come to light, you would have died along with the rest of us,” he says, battling to contain the wobble. “Why would you do that?”

“Yeah, we almost died there!” Hiro says. 

“Maybe that’s what I wanted.” Hina’s frigid, her anger an arctic blast. “Sakura only killed herself ‘cause you all pushed her in a corner. You all killed her. Even… e-even I helped kill her. I couldn’t let her be the only one who died.” 

“You mean—you were gonna take us down with you?” Genocide Jill asks. 

Byakuya stares at the floor, unblinking. 

“We have to atone for our sins,” Hina says. “Do you realize how much despair Sakura was carrying with her when she died? Any idea? I.. I-I found Sakura’s suicide note.” 

Makoto looks. Byakuya refuses. 

“I should’ve seen it coming…” she says hoarsely. “Sakura thought all of this was her fault. That she was responsible. Which is why she wanted to find a way to get everyone to forgive her. That’s why she invited you all to the rec room—she just wanted to talk! And you all attacked her! She completely believed in all of us… and you tried to kill her.” 

Hina’s breakthrough sobs are quiet now. 

“I sh-should’ve stopped her. I tr-tried to p-protect her a-and got h-hurt for it, and th-that just made it w-worse… a-and I di-didn’t even realize it. We a-all killed Sakura. W-we all d-deserve to die…” 

Makoto’s shocked silent, tears peppering his own face. Byakuya’s breath is hard to find, and at last he sucks it in sharply. 

“And you did this, all of this, almost killed everyone—because you loved her?”

Hina stares him in the eye. “She died hating us. It was the l-least I could do. But I still… I still couldn’t even do that for her.” 

“Well, isn’t that cute!” Monokuma says, and Byakuya jumps out of his skin. He nearly forgot about the stuffed animal. 

Monokuma chortles. “But do you really think you had any idea what Sakura was really thinking when she died?” 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

Sakura’s suicide note, the thing that almost killed them all, was fake. Forged by that goddamned bear. 

She died. She died to save them, to stop the fighting, to save her dojo, and they almost died anyway. By Hina’s own hand, she nearly squandered what Sakura had intended for her death. They almost squandered it. 

Monokuma cackles. “Thanks to you, Hina, her death is pretty much meaningless! Everyone, blame her! Go ahead, all the blame—she deserves it! Now the next victim has been decided!” 

“What do you mean?” Makoto growls it, and the noise prickles Byakuya’s neck. “No one blames anybody!” 

“Hmm?” 

Byakuya can’t help it, how he stares at the boy with eyes that must be far too big. 

“First, you’re wrong for tricking Hina with that fake suicide note. And Sakura’s death wasn’t a waste! She made us remember that we’re friends who need to work together!” 

Friends. Teamwork. The same old drivel, and yet… 

“Damn straight,” Hiro says. “This is all because of our misplaced hatred. I don’t blame Hina—I can’t blame her. Nobody can blame her, either!” 

Makoto raises his head taller with the backup. “The spy was just a distraction. It never really mattered. The one we need to hate, to take down, is you, nobody else!” 

“What the heck? This isn’t how this was supposed to go!” Monokuma seethes. “But anyway, are you so sure about that? This killing game is a competition between all of you, remember? Your enemy is each other.” 

Byakuya takes a deep breath. He doesn’t tear his eyes off Makoto. “He’s absolutely right.” 

“Ah, lovely Byakuya, good dog! You understand, don’t you?” 

He sneers. “In this life-or-death elimination game, the only way to survive… is to win. Those are indelibly the rules of the game. Which is”—he sucks in another stubborn breath—“why I’m bowing out of the game.”

“Huh?” 

“Hina and Sakura were more than willing to sacrifice their own lives to deny the reality of the game,” he says. 

Friendship. Teamwork. Love. 

“Thanks to them, it would appear the others have cast aside their fear.” The excuse on his tongue is flat, like bubbly drinks robbed of their carbonation. “There’s no point in participating in a game which has lost that sense of excitement.” 

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

And then Alter Ego dies. As much as an AI can die. But Makoto called even that his friend. 

Spat out by the elevator, Makoto hesitates by him, mouth opening, before he shakes his head and moves on. Byakuya watches him go silently, standing still so long that even Genocide Jill grows bored and wanders off. 

In his room, Byakuya Togami ponders love. 

Is it the warmth of a tepid summer day? The embrace of a salted hot bath after a brutal day? Or is it the splintering and piercing fragments of shattered bone? The rending of flesh between snapping jaws? 

Is it the squirming in his stomach or the tangling in his chest? The impossible, unknowable force that drives his eyes to Makoto and craves his attention in turn? 

What part of him counts the commoner boy’s freckles and wonders what color his eyes would be in sunlight? 

A Togami shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have these thoughts to parse in the first place. 

He can’t love anyone, especially not an average boy. 

But in his dark room, with his blankets kicked off and silk pajamas suffocating, Byakuya wonders if he loves Makoto Naegi. 

Is that why he hadn’t killed the boy? Is that really the force that drove his door down and sunk his inhuman teeth into flesh in a nobody’s defense? What edged him into the bathroom to weep like he hasn't in years, since his mother died? 

Byakuya thinks that love is an infection. The site is warm to the touch, but the poison hits the bloodstream and kills everything. Maybe it’s arsenic and vomiting blood. Or maybe it’s chocolate. 

Byakuya doesn’t cry, but he cradles himself and, against all of his common sense, dares to nurse the little flame budding in his chest. He feels tepid summer warmth and teeth in his shoulder and chocolate pumping his heart too quickly. 

Chapter 6: A Breakdown, so to Speak

Notes:

this fucker is cluster b

signed, an author with bpd who totally isn't projecting

Chapter Text

Byakuya has no idea what he’s doing. 

Standing in front of the stove, boxed hot chocolate mix in hand, he glares down at the curdled milk in the saucepan. He’s never had the wretched stuff, but he can imagine it’s not meant to look like cottage cheese. 

He dumps the pan, rinses it, and starts over. Maybe he needs to gradually heat the milk. It ravaged it to a boil pretty quickly.  

Sure, it would be simpler to present Makoto a cup of chocolate milk, but he figures his half-cooked apology will taste better with a little more effort. The box suggested milk instead of hot water for a “creamier, richer taste,” and so he’s hellbent on achieving that. After all he’s spat at Makoto…

Well, Byakuya figures he deserves a creamy and rich mug of hot chocolate. 

This time, the milk stays both warm and perfectly liquid, and he combines everything with a whisk. It’s not as picture perfect as the branding, but he’s tickled with himself, all things considered. 

Guarding the steaming mug, he ducks back into the dining hall until a passing Toko slouches out view. He’s no more interested in the pair of alters, even if he had complimented Toko for finding the knife on the fifth floor earlier. His sight is on the dorms. Ought to start there. 

When no one responds to the doorbell, he pinches the bridge of his nose with a sigh. The school’s breadth expanded with every execution; there’s no telling where Makoto could be now with five entire floors. Biting his lip, he hovers in front of the door, paying Kyoko little mind as she passes him. 

“I didn’t take you for a hot chocolate type,” she says. 

“I am not.” 

She neither replies nor gives him a second glance. He rock on his heels as she nears the end of the hallway. Finally, he groans and asks, “Have you seen Makoto?” 

That question makes her turn her head back. She says, “He’s in the nurse’s office, if I had to guess. He changes his bandages around now.”  

And then she’s gone. Heaven only knows on what mission that woman’s set herself. He shakes his head and makes for the office, only hesitating when he smells a touch of chlorine. Neurotically flattening the front of his undershirt, he enters. 

Inside, Hina kneels in front of a shirtless Makoto. Byakuya freezes cold, his spine locked like steel, before he sees she’s only smoothing a fresh bandage over an angry gouge on his back. Makoto hunches on a cot, though he looks up and quirks an eyebrow at Byakuya. Hina glowers at him. 

“Hello,” he says after an awkward moment. 

“Hey,” Makoto says. 

Byakuya clears his throat, but Hina only leans back and crosses her arms at him. This is so not going to plan. He sighs, cutting his gaze down to the mug in his hands. “I, er, brought you something.” 

“Ah.”

Byakuya’s tired chest coils at how curiously he stares at the offered cup. “It’s not poisoned or anything.” He demonstrates with a quick sip of the vile stuff, which helps to swallow the petty defensive snark that’s building on his tongue as well. It’s predictably a little too sweet, but he’s surprised at the warmth that spreads up from his abdomen. The froth clings to his lips, and it takes him a second too long to lick it away. 

The buds of a smile prick Makoto’s face, and they grow and bloom and spread until he ducks his head and laughs and Byakuya’s warm stomach churns. The boy takes the mug from his roasting hands and tips back a drink of his own. “Hmm!” 

“Is it… acceptable?” 

“It’s good,” Makoto says. His eyes light mischievously. “But you know what would make it better?” 

Byakuya clenches his arm. Something flutters at the back of his throat. “What?” 

“Marshmallows. I saw some in the storage room, I think, but I’m too short to reach them.” 

He tilts his head. “Is that so?” 

“Put your shirt back on before you start traipsing around,” Hina says, tossing it at his head. 

He’s only in a t-shirt this afternoon—no comically mismatched hoodie and blazer. He obediently slips it over his head, grunting slightly at the strain, and stands. “Thank you, Hina.” 

“Mhm.” Byakuya feels her eyes on the back of his head as they leave, but she says nothing more. 

Halfway to the storage room, Makoto grimaces. “Hey, Byakuya, I thought you couldn’t have chocolate.” 

“That paltry amount shouldn’t hurt me,” he says. His heart already rams for other reasons, and his mouth dries more and more as they draw nearer. 

Inside the dark, cold space, Byakuya easily retrieves the miniature marshmallows for Makoto. He sighs with closed eyes and a small smile after his first marshmallow-ed sip, then takes another without hesitation. “Thank you.” 

Byakuya fights the urge to clear his throat again. He pushes up his already pushed glasses, smooths his already smooth blazer, and finally resorts to stuffing his hands in his pockets. 

Makoto’s the one who looks away, his imperfect and lopsided smile drooping. “But, um… I don’t know. I’m guessing this’s about something else, isn’t it?” 

Yeah, against all my family’s teachings and reasons to exist, I’m pretty sure I’m horrifically smitten with you, Makoto Naegi, and I don’t know why I do the things that I do or say the things that I say

No, an outburst like that wouldn’t do at all. 

“‘Cause, well, I’ve been trying to give you some space since we’re, you know… I know you hate me.” 

He almost whines. Whines. Like some pitiful creature. “I don’t hate you.” 

“Oh.” 

Byakuya gulps. He finds that here, standing in front of Makoto, all of his pre-orchestrated words skitter away from him. His mouth opens, then closes, and opens again, and he stares there silently like some kind of dullard, unable to look at him. 

“Byakuya?” 

“I-I… I have… considered that—t-that my behavior recently may have been… a little unwarranted.” 

Makoto stares at him. “A little?” 

“Perhaps more than a little,” Byakuya says quietly, refusing to meet his eyes. 

The boy across from him releases a shaky breath. “That’s… That’s a start. That’s a good start.” 

Byakuya chances a flashed glance at the boy, and his eyes immediately flood with thorny heat. He tries to steel his jaw, but it only makes everything worse as he braces his body against a sob. 

“Ah, shoot!” Makoto doesn’t touch him—he wishes he would touch him—but he hovers awkwardly, hands up. “Maybe—maybe we should go somewhere? My room, your room?” 

“I don’t care,” he says miserably. 

“Your room,” he decides, taking the lead. 

Byakuya valiantly wipes his face before stepping out, but they encounter no one else on the way. His hands tremble so badly he can scarcely unlock his door, and Makoto needs to secure it behind them. Byakuya collapses on his bed, head cradled in his hands. 

A respectful gap between them, Makoto sits as well. “Do you want another drink? You looked like you liked it.” 

Byakuya accepts, and as its cloying sweet warmth floods through him, there’s nothing left to prop up his dam. He feels the final crack reverberate through his body, and bawls, broken gasps and whimpers scalding his throat as he cringes into himself. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It wasn’t supposed to go like this at all. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Makoto murmurs, jerking his hands around until one, finally, comes to rest once more on Byakuya’s back; the other takes the mug back and sets it on the table. It makes everything worse, and Byakuya whines less like a human being and more like a kicked dog. 

He shouldn’t be doing this. Can’t be doing this. He was supposed to apologize elegantly and glide away! Not… not whatever this is. But he can’t even fathom moving his legs right now, and where would he go? He hiccups. They’re already in his dorm. 

“G-geez, man…” 

Around gasping sobs, he says, “I’m sorry . I-I don’t know wh-what’s wrong with me.”

What’s wrong with him? If he were a true Togami, there’d only be outrage at the mere implication that something could be amiss, but as he trembles and weeps next to a commoner boy on his bed, he thinks there’s something terribly, horribly malfunctioning in him. 

Is this the love Hina talked about? He’s not sure he wants it. 

Byakuya dry heaves. 

“All right, all right, okay, Byakuya, you need to breathe.” Suddenly, both hands are on him— around his shoulder, clenching his wrist and bringing it up to Makoto’s chest. Before, the rushing blood in his ears blocked it out, but now Makoto’s heartbeat hits him like a drug, beating steadily through his whole crumbling body. “Um, can you take a deep breath for me, man? In and out, okay?” 

Makoto models, and Byakuya follows his lead after a few inhales, greedily looking to fill his aching lungs. Linked by the palm still pressed to his chest, his crashing heart gradually falls into Makoto’s rhythm. Tears still seep from his eyes, but he sniffles quietly. Pathetic. It’s so pathetic. He groans and takes off his glasses. His cheeks feel hot and sticky, and his throat cramps. 

A bottle of water is coaxed into his hand. “Take a drink, man.” 

Byakuya complies wordlessly. Makoto lets him wrangle his breathing and swipe away the worst of his indecent tears without interruption. His head throbs anew, and he feels blood-let and weak. Empty. 

“Do… you feel better?” Makoto asks finally. 

Byakuya barks a hollow laugh. “I’m tired, Makoto.” 

“Do you want me to leave?” 

His throat clamps. “I think that… t-that I’d like you to stay, if you have no complaints.” 

Makoto stays. 

He babbles to Byakuya about his family while drinking the cooling hot chocolate—his doting mother and loving father and darling sister. Byakuya has no point of reference for the latter two, but he can’t help a bittersweet quirk of his lips when Makoto speaks about his mom. 

“We make all homemade hot chocolate, you know. I-I mean, not super homemade, but our own cocoa powder and sugar instead of just a mix, right? And a little vanilla. The mixes always miss the vanilla.” 

“I see,” he says softly. 

“My sister always puts so much cocoa in that it never mixes all the way, so there’s always just a grainy soup at the bottom of her mug. Or even floating at the top, but I think she likes it that way.” 

That’s interesting. My siblings want me dead. 

He doesn’t say it, of course. 

Makoto talks about the school he went to before he won the lottery. Byakuya tells him about his butler. They always skirt around the werewolf in the room, so to speak—the incident that left him so battered, and more or less how he’s been running his mouth. 

His eyelids grow heavy, and finally when he almost nods off sitting up, Makoto says, “Maybe you should take a nap or something.” 

He grunts. “It’s seven. In the ruling class, we call that ‘going to bed.’”

“Okay, then maybe you should go to bed.” 

“Maybe,” he says. He cracks his neck, then his back, turning to the boy beside him. “Would….” 

He swallows. It tastes wrong to ask. This whole thing puts a sour tang on his tongue. 

But still, Byakuya says, “Would you come to me again tomorrow? I believe we have more to discuss.” 

“Yeah, yeah… I’ll come see you again, Byakuya.” 

He stifles the out-of-place grin. “Thank you.” 

Chapter 7: The Talk

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Before Makoto comes to drag the skeletons out of their closet, Byakuya handles his morning bathroom routine. In the mirror, he discovers a pimple, of all the godforsaken things that could’ve happened to him. Prodding it only makes it redder, and he scoffs and skulks into a shower. 

Between the threats against his life and the full moon and Makoto Naegi’s infuriating smile, Byakuya hasn’t had too many spare brain faculties to fret about his testosterone, but seeing evidence of his fluctuating hormones in the glass turns his stomach and mood for the worse. Of course, the bear wouldn’t provide him any. Not that he’d ever ask or even take whatever mystery concoction he’d be presented with anyway. 

So Byakuya accepts the pimple like a dog accepts a choke collar and storms off to grudgingly eat breakfast a little past eight. When he enters the dining hall, all eyes are on him, oddly scrutinizing. 

Is it that bad? 

“Byakuya, where’s Makoto?” Hina asks. To her credit, she at least tries to keep her voice even and fair. The fear in the air hits him suddenly, spicy. 

“What?” His throat dries. “How should I know?” 

“Last we heard, he was with you,” Hiro says. 

Byakuya grits his teeth. Even if they all had verbally sworn off this killing game, nothing could stop a straight-faced liar from betraying them. “He left around seven last night, and I retired early. No one else has really seen him?” 

“That’s it. I’m going to check on him,” Hina says. Byakuya lingers as she passes, but as the rest of them stand to trail behind the woman, he abides by the tugging in his feet to follow suit. He paces to be just behind her. Kyoko joins him. 

When she rings his doorbell, nothing stirs for a painful minute. She buzzes it again, and, at last, Makoto appears in his boxers, rubbing his sleep-swollen eyes. “S’all right?” 

Byakuya almost swoons with relief. “Dammit, Naegi, you had this motley crew worried sick about you.” 

He frowns. “Sorry, sorry. I guess I’m feelin’ a little under the weather… Fell asleep again after the morning announcement.” 

“What’s the matter?” Hina asks. 

“I dunno,” he says like his tongue is sticky. “I guess those scratches feel kinda hot.” 

“I was worried about this. Put your pants on so we can go to the nurse’s office,” Kyoko says. She turns to everyone else, him included. “Go busy yourselves. Makoto doesn’t need a crowd.” 

Byakuya narrows his eyes. She’s right, though, isn’t she? What use would he be? And so he disperses with the rest of them, his primary plan for the day dashed. Toko harasses him around the library while he refreshes his cache and sits too close to him during breakfast. All the while, he bites his tongue. Or maybe he just doesn’t care enough to open his mouth. It all feels a bit cottony. 

A few hours later, he’s surprised to hear Makoto outside his room, and even more shocked when the bell rings. Makoto’s missing his blazer tonight; the big hoodie hugs his shoulders. Rings round his eyes, but there’s a shine to them when he says, “Hi, Byakuya. Can I come in?” 

“You’re unwell.” 

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. I took some ibuprofen, and Hina found some antibiotics. Really, I’m okay. Anyway, I told you we’d talk today.” 

They sit on the bed again. Byakuya can’t help thumbing the red bump on his jaw, and he grumbles when his finger bumps into its twin. Now there are two. Good. 

“So,” Makoto says. 

“So.” Byakuya leans back. “What’s wrong with you?” 

He grimaces. “The scratches are a little infected. But I’m okay, I swear.” 

Byakuya realizes with a start that he thinks he can smell it. He’s not sure the average human would notice, but it smells vaguely sickly sweet and a little like old cat food. Makoto smells overall off—he’s been sweating more. 

“You should try to take it easy, whatever that means in here,” he says. 

“Yeah…” Makoto’s next breath is deep. “So… what did you want to talk about?” 

“Everything, in a way, although I suppose we ought to narrow that down. I…” 

For years, he’s been conditioned against the phrase about to leave his mouth. 

“I do apologize for what I said to you.” He hesitates. “I’m not sure yet if I feel sorry for what I did to Chihiro or said about Sakura. It all seemed very reasonable at the time.

“I am also not sure we can be ‘friends’ or anything of the sort… or if I can always hold my tongue. But I suppose that I should be turning the most of my attention to the mastermind and matter of escaping.” 

It sickens him to say. Does he still even want to graduate? 

He looks at Makoto’s watering eyes and doesn’t know how much he ever really did. Not after the first couple trials. 

“That seems pretty big for you, Byakuya,” he finally says. “I forgive you.” 

He doesn’t expect the clamp of emotions. “Thank you.” 

“But… I don’t know,” Makoto continues, tilting his head in thought. “Saving my life and making me hot chocolate and having a breakdown in front of me kinda makes us friends, if you ask me. I mean, we’re not quite strangers anymore.” 

“That’s… yes, that’s true,” Byakuya admits. He takes off his glasses and wipes them for no other reason than to busy his hands. “I wanted to talk about that as well. The matter of ‘saving your life.’ I’m not sure we quite resolved that.” 

“I thought it was fine,” he says. 

“Maybe.” He frowns at his jiggling leg. “To be quite frank, I’m not sure what I want to say about it myself. I just feel… oddly about it.” 

“Maybe it’s just the whole thing. You know, werewolf, getting outed like that. Probably sucked.” 

“It was…rather unfortunate.” 

“Hiro made it a pretty big deal out of it after the trial,” he says. “But he’s more okay with it all now. No one’s all that worried or bothered about it. I guess it helps that the only thing you did was stop m-my… well.” 

He holds his shoulder. “Yes.” 

“Can I…” He scratches his cheek again, nervous. “Can I see that bruise you talked about?” 

Byakuya considers the request for about thirty seconds before gingerly tugging off his blazer and rolling up his sleeve. It’s still green and yellow today, though the heart is a little black and a lot sore. 

“That’s insane,” he says. “That’s like your whole bicep.” 

“I can only imagine it took a lot of force to break these doors,” he says, jostling his sleeve back down. 

“You have to be crazy strong.” 

Byakuya scoffs. “I can only imagine. I was never lying—I barely remember anything from those cursed nights. When I come back to myself, I usually just go back to sleep until I can… fix myself.” 

“Oh! You’re… still a werewolf when you come back?” 

“Usually.” He rolls his eyes. “Heaven knows why. I suppose it’s all the better to torture me with.” 

Makoto hums. “I wish I remembered what you looked like.” 

“Tch. I am, for one, glad you don’t, and I intend to never show you—anyone, for that matter.” 

Makoto might look hurt for a moment, but he ducks his head too soon to tell for sure. Byakuya’s chest bangs. “I guess that’s fair.” 

“It’s not… personal,” he tries to say gently. It’s a foreign venture. “It’s only very, well… embarrassing for me. I’m not a mere animal, but I’m reduced to a near-one against my will.” 

“Yeah…” Makoto says. It’s his turn for his eyes to droop mid-conversation. “Yeah, that makes sense.” 

“Makoto, what did I tell you? You’re unwell.” Byakuya stands, gesturing for Makoto to follow. “You should rest. It’s about time for Monokuma to pull one his tricks; you need your energy.” 

He hums and furrows his eyebrows but complies. Byakuya walks him the miniscule distance to his door and crosses his arms as Makoto fumbles the key. 

“Hey,” Makoto says. 

“Yes?” 

“Are we friends, then?” 

Byakuya’s lips twitch. The void in his chest is so, so greedy. It wants more, craves more; things Byakuya scarcely knows the existence of. Embraces and the flutter of lips and confident arms that say “I got you.” 

But Byakuya nods. “I acquiesce.” 

Makoto smiles, and he slips away. 

Notes:

okay i jump the shark really bad in the next chapter. it's where the self-indulgence shines really horrifically. it's super ultra mega cringe from here on out, folks.

awoo bark bark woof grr

i'm an adult

Chapter 8: The Battle

Notes:

HERE IT IS. MY JUMPING OF THE SHARK. THE CRINGEFEST.

i don't caaaaaare i'm uploading the last chapter and going to bed its noon and i haven't slept or eaten or taken my meds

btw byakuya is a glorified furry

Chapter Text

In the morning, Makoto brings Byakuya more civet coffee from the gashapon machine, and, well… who is he to complain? 

He’s awfully warm when their fingers brush, and his eyes are darker than yesterday. He wears only a t-shirt today. But he doesn’t complain either, and he sits with everyone in the dining hall and even manages a few laughs at some odd comment or another. Byakuya watches him over his book and coffee with slit eyes. 

Monokuma doesn’t give them long after breakfast before announcing that everyone should meet in the trial chamber. He must be excited, which is certainly great news for them. 

“No point in trying to avoid it, right?” Hiro asks weakly. “He’ll just hunt us down and drag us there anyway.”

“But why d-down there? Why n-not the gym?” Toko. 

“Let’s go find out,” Kyoko says. 

Makoto just rubs his eyes. 

Byakuya doesn’t bother fighting his protective inclination to stay near him as they gather in the elevator. Descending in this elevator never doesn’t upset something in Byakuya’s stomach, but he feels a particular level of pooling, drowning dread, especially as they step out and the door to the execution chamber is open. 

The chain collar snaking out of the hallway and latching around his neck happens in a blink. 

Byakuya spits and stutters his “what the hell?” while he instinctively grasps it, but the growl when he notices the twin around Makoto’s neck is wordless. 

Toko mutters something about only she being allowed to put collars on him, and Hiro says, “What the hell, Monokuma? They haven’t done anything!” 

“Well, now, I’m not sure I’d say that.” The bear bounds out when mentioned, his red eye particularly bright today. “Little Makoto has been sneaking around and putting his nose into too many places lately, haven’t you?” 

“What?” Byakuya rasps, and Kyoko’s back locks. 

In typical fashion, he doesn’t elaborate. “Now, I’ll let you two come nicely. I’d like to keep your banging up minimal so this is a little more… fair.” 

They’re in no position to resist—that’s for damn sure. Grimacing, Byakuya relents to trudging down the hallway. Makoto trembles next to him, wide-eyed and too terribly quiet save for his rapid breathing. 

The execution chamber isn’t set to any particular theme. In fact, it’s rather bare, with its plain concrete floors and walls empty except for the person standing on the far left end of it. 

Byakuya stops dead. 

“It’s… Celeste,” he whispers. 

“But she’s… dead! We watched her die!” Hina says hoarsely. 

Byakuya’s restraint tugs a warning. He trepidatiously unglues his feet and follows its guidance to the far right side of the room. Makoto’s led to the dead center between them. 

“You’ll have to forgive me for breaking my own rules.” Monokuma’s face appears projected on the screen mounted to the far wall. “I just thought, ‘man, what a shame to lose such an interesting plot thread like that.’ Then I realized I can do what I want! Especially in the name of entertainment, baby!” 

“Hello, Byakuya. Makoto,” Celeste says. 

Neither answers. 

“So you faked her death for what purpose?” Kyoko calls out. 

“Well, I waited around to see what would happen a bit, you know. This wasn’t a decision I could rush into. But you guys were dedicated to this disgusting ‘friendship’ narrative. You accepted Byakuya the werewolf into your ranks and didn’t even turn Aoi into a pariah! How lame.” 

“What’s the point?” Byakuya asks. His fingers are frigid on the chill metal around his throat. He looks at Makoto, Celeste, Makoto—back and forth until he’s dizzy. 

“Okay, okay, fine, I’ll cut to the chase. We’re gonna play a special, rules-exempt game called ‘kill Makoto in the most savage way possible!’” 

What?”

“W-wait—” 

“Whichever one of you werewolves deals the killing blow to Makoto Naegi gets to graduate immediately! No strings, no trial, no nothing. And your other classmates won’t even get punished. Insta-out with minimal casualties. But you have to be a werewolf, okay? No just strangling him or something—that’s boring.” 

“Hold on, hold on, that’s not fair!” Makoto yells. He writhes against his restraints, tossing and twisting and Byakuya already smells his blood. He’s ripped something open. He can’t move. Everything feels so underwater, so far away. 

“Hey, hey I’m not done yet! You can get out of this, Naegi—you just have to make it back to the fence. How’s that for fair?” 

“Not! It’s not fair!” 

“Hmm. Agree to disagree! Anyway, a few more things. Remember that this all only applies to dispatching Makoto. Celeste, as disappointing as it is, you just can’t kill Byakuya. You’ve already got two kills under your belt, you know? Gotta maintain some order here.” 

She bows. 

“And Byakuya, if you kill Celeste, you’ll have to have stand trial, and, well, that’s kinda signing your own death certificate, isn’t it? Pretty cut-and-dried, if you ask me! Basically, only kill Makoto!” 

“What happens to the one who doesn’t kill him?” Celeste asks. She’s grotesquely composed. Byakuya’s about to vomit. The acid stings his throat. 

“Byakuya’ll get to return to his killing school life if he doesn’t cut ties with his new boy toy, but I’ll have to punish you for real this time if you fail. Got it?” 

“So,” she says, eyes cherry-hot steel, “it’s kill Makoto or die?”

“You do got it!” he says cheerily. 

“No,” Makoto whispers. “No, no, no, no… This is wrong! I haven’t done anything!” 

“Maybe you should be a little less of a thorn in your captor’s side next time,” Monokuma says. 

“W-wait…” Byakuya’s tongue barely works. He’s head-to-toe numb, full of a thrumming, consuming static. “H-how are we supposed to do this? We only turn on full moons.” 

“Your inability does not constitute one on my part,” Celeste says. “I’m fully capable of shifting whenever I please.” 

“What she said! Any last questions?” 

“You can’t do this!” Hina cries. 

“H-hold on…” Byakuya says weakly. 

“Nope? All right! Countdown time! Ten, nine…” 

“Like I said before, Makoto,” Celeste says, “it’s not personal. But I am getting out of here.” 

“…six, five…” 

“No—no—” Makoto wheezes. 

“ …three, two…” 

Makoto whirls around to him. His pretty eyes are blown-wide panicked saucers. “Byakuya—!” 

One! Get him!” 

Their collars release with a snap. Byakuya staggers with a ragged breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Celeste remains human, prowling around to block Makoto’s path toward the fence. She can smell how helpless they both truly are. He could certainly dodge and make a run for it, but she’s always going to be quicker, stronger, deadlier. 

“I’ll try to make it quick,” Celeste says. 

Makoto’s visceral terror is a spear in Byakuya’s gut, spooling everything into one knot that makes him double over. “C-come on!” the boy says. “You don’t have to play his sick game, Celeste. You don’t have to do this.” 

She shakes her head. “And die? I’m going home after this.” 

Celeste’s change is as elegant as she is, a swift, graceful, and nearly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it metamorphosis. She shakes the scraps of clothing off her slender and sleek form and drops onto all fours to stalk—no, glide—toward her prey. 

And all Byakuya can do is watch. Pins and needles and sweat ravage his entire body, and he mirrors her circling lamely from the other side of Makoto. The strangled knot in his stomach presses against his heart and lungs, and he struggles to keep the blackness away from the corners of his eyes. 

When she leaps for Makoto, he naturally stumbles back, but there’s nothing he—anyone—can do. 

The knot ruptures with a downpour of supernova agony, and something in Byakuya snaps. As he chokes a scream, he realizes it’s his rearranging skeleton. He feels four paws skimming the ground in a dead sprint even before the blackout darkness and nausea dissipate. Makoto screams, and he crashes into Celeste, a snarling wall of fur and muscle. 

Byakuya’s momentum knocks them both clear of Makoto, but he hasn’t even a heartbeat to orient himself to his abrupt shift. He’s almost twice her size, but she’s nimble and coordinated where he’s a floundering fish out of water. She peppers his body with light blows and nips as they flail together, and he’s fortunate to snap his teeth anywhere near her. 

Just give up, she growls in his ear, teasing the tip with her teeth and heaving him into the hard concrete. Just let me go. It’s no skin off your back, is it? You’ll have another chance. 

Byakuya propels himself upward, his teeth connecting. She barks in surprise and jerks back, leaving a tuft of obsidian fur clenched between his fangs. He hucks it out, staring her down as they both pant. From the corner of his eye—whose shoddy vision even lycanthropy can’t improve—he sees Makoto crawling toward the fence. 

Celeste does too. She snarls and cuffs Byakuya so hard that he’s bowled over with a yelp that shreds his throat. He’s never quite understood the phrase “seeing stars” until now. His skull rings like a bell, and he slumps on the ground. Warm and wet liquid falls from his pink nose, a dribble at first, then a waterfall. The same seeps out from between his lips. He coughs and sputters blood. 

His eyes are open—he sees—but it feels like minutes before his body responds to his demands to blink and breathe and stagger to his feet. Celeste lopes toward Makoto, whose only option is to crawl faster. Not fast enough. She grabs him by the hem and flings him back. 

Byakuya whines thickly around the blood spilling down his nose and stumbles to block her path to him. 

Where’s your dignity? she asks him. 

Byakuya’s not sure anymore. 

I don’t feel like dealing with this, she growls. Just step aside

Byakuya feints instead, and it throws them into another whirl of snapping teeth and claws. Celeste’s not holding back this time—it’s all he can do to avoid the worst of it. She aims another blow at his head, and he pitches himself far enough back so only her claws score his muzzle. Before he can even begin to recover, she flips around him and snatches the edge his delicate ear between her teeth. 

He bucks her off, and when she stumbles, he knows he has to lunge—now. Toppling into her, he snaps his grossly long jaws around her throat. He’s got a good grip on the smaller werewolf now, and he uses his weight to keep her down. 

Byakuya throttles her. She fakes going limp, then struggles once she realizes he’s not falling for it, and then actually begins to fall weaker. When she stops stirring—but still tries to breathe—he unlatches and shakes himself out with a hoarse wheeze. He flings blood. Blinking it out of his eye, he looks for the smudge of Makoto. He’s not moved since she tossed him—why hasn’t he moved? 

Byakuya approaches Makoto stiffly on all fours. The pain in his leg has reignited, and he grunts with every step. He sees Makoto now. He clutches an arm that hangs at an odd angle, his face cherry-red and slick with sweat as he eyes Byakuya’s approach. His mouth moves, but it won’t pierce the ringing in his ears. 

If he were to kill Makoto now… 

It’s an errant and intrusive thought that makes him pause. He swallows the copper taste going down his throat and pins his ears. 

But what if he did? All his undignified scrabbling in the body of a beast would be worth something. Makoto’s life would be a worthy sacrifice, wouldn’t it? If Byakuya could escape and take down the mastermind and maybe even rescue the last of them? 

He snorts blood and stalks over until he looms over the boy with hands studded with claws and a mouth full of killing teeth. He lifts one paw, flexes his awkward fingers, and experimentally presses it against Makoto’s throat. He tastes the terror, the chocolate, the sweat—feels his pulse thrumming up through his bones—swims in his wet green eyes. “Please,” he whispers, and his ears swivel forward at the sudden processing of audio. He’s zeroed in completely on Makoto. One of his hands clasp the coarse fur around his elbow. “Byakuya, please.” 

He can’t do it. He remembers hot chocolate and mothers and rosehip tea and Hina’s howl as she wept over the podium and Makoto’s scream before Byakuya broke down his door and he can’t do it. His paw slips off harmlessly, nosebleed pattering on Makoto’s sweatshirt as he deflates and keens. 

Byakuya’s weak. He’s so weak. Not worthy of his name in the slightest. 

He glances back at the fence. Might as well complete his pathetic endeavor. 

He raises his head and leans back, offering the same hand to Makoto. Makoto stares at it, at him, wheezing his breaths. 

Byakuya’s ear pivots as he hears Celeste struggling to her feet. Fresh fear twists in his gut, and he barks at Makoto, despising the noise before it ever leaves his chest. He emphasizes his hand, and Makoto tries. Oh, he tries. But he crumples back down, and Celeste makes it to her paws. 

In much the same way she had grabbed him before, panic has Byakuya snatching his t-shirt and scrabbling backwards, dragging him toward the fence despite his cries of pain. When he finds his leg holds weight, he swings up to his back paws and hauls Makoto in his arms. Celeste howls in fury and launches toward them. He’s not going to make it. 

So he hurls Makoto and braces himself for Celeste. It’s all he can do to stop his skull from smashing into the concrete. She snaps her teeth centimeters from his nose, claws teasing the tender skin of his throat. 

“A-nd game!” Monokuma calls. 

She spits and snarls, not removing herself. Beads of blood well under her talons. 

“Hey, hey, now, you can’t kill him, remember? Bad dogs! Break it up!” 

The collar snatches her off him, and he flails to his feet, choking on the blood that poured down his throat while supine. 

“Well, playboy,” Monokuma says, “I’d get out of the arena if I were you. Would sure be a shame to lose both of my favorite pets.” 

The gate’s open now, and Hina and Kyoko have already pulled Makoto to safety. Byakuya growls and shakes himself out, limping like a beaten dog to the other side. And, really, is he not just that? 

He sits with his back to the arena, heaving in great gulps of air and furtively staring at Makoto. There’s no mistaking, no plausible deniability. He totally, absolutely, completely sacrificed his own freedom to save another person’s life. 

He feels ill, but it might be all the blood he’s swallowed. 

“Where are you hurt?” Hina’s asking Makoto, over and over until it gets through to him. 

He gasps. “My arm and… my leg, maybe? I-I don’t re-really know. I’ve kinda stopped f-feeling it, you know?” When he tries to stand, his right leg just folds underneath him, useless. “Dammit!” 

“If you’re done, Monokuma, we should get going,” Kyoko says. 

“Oh, fine. You’re no fun,” the bear huffs. “I guess you’ve already seen her die once. I had something extra fun planned but, oh well, I won’t waste it on ungrateful wretches.” 

“Appreciated,” she says drily, then returns to kneeling beside Makoto. “We need to go to the nurse’s office. That’s almost definitely broken.” 

“I’m starting to hate that place,” Makoto mumbles. 

Hina tries to heft him up. She’s strong, but she’s no taller than him and has zero leverage. Hiro is a green bean. 

Byakuya sighs, bubbling blood, and pads over. Toko squeals and hides her face at the sight of him. He can’t begin to imagine the extent of his bleeding, but he already feels where fur tugs his skin, drying and matting in sharp red spikes. 

“Y-you know,” Hiro says weakly, “there was a part of me th-that still thought this werewolf stuff was a joke.” 

Byakuya ignores him, kneeling beside Makoto. If he didn’t feel anything a few minutes ago, he almost certainly does now. He’s white as a sun-bleached bone. His good arm cradles his limp one, and his green eyes are glassy. 

He hoists Makoto up in a fireman’s carry, the only noise he makes a moan as he stands. All his aches are beginning to smart as well; he needs to get walking before he can’t. 

Makoto slings his working arm around Byakuya’s neck, clenching the dense fur there as he limps them toward the elevator.

 

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

 

In the nurse’s office, they figure out where to pinch Byakuya’s nose to staunch the bleeding. That’s after Makoto summons demons with his screams from Hina popping his dislocated arm back in place. In comparison, he’s remarkably stoic and silent when they wrap his very broken leg—one of the calf bones. He doesn’t remember, admittedly. He sits away from the rest of them, head bowed and ears drooped. 

He craves his human skin and the solitude to contemplate all of his life choices that led to this point. He’s still unable to quite grasp it. The drumming in his head tells him he’s made a dreadful miscalculation, a misstep, a grotesque error. 

But when he looks at Makoto, the only reason he’s stayed instead of slinking away with his tail between his legs, he doesn’t feel his torn ear or battered head or sliced snout. 

He feels a tepid summer day and the warmth of hot chocolate. 

Chapter 9: The Couch

Notes:

now goodbye forever

Chapter Text

The next morning, Byakuya looks in the mirror and mourns. 

The top of his human ear is studded with holes. There’s no natural healing from the shredding. The gouges on his face may be more forgiving, but there’s no doubt that they’re going to scar for a few years. 

Oh, when his only physical concern was two pimples! 

Still, when he dives deeper than the surface-level alarm bells, he can’t find a fiber of his that regrets it. 

When his doorbell rings and he smells chlorine, it’s only reluctantly that he answers it. Hina’s face twitches, but she doesn’t grimace. “Hey. We’re all in the rec room. Makoto wanted to invite you, just in case.” 

“The third floor? How in the hell did you get him up there?” Byakuya asks. 

“With difficulty. Do you wanna come?” 

His default response, a scathing no, stalls on his tongue. He tips his head. “…Sure. I’ll be there in a minute.” 

When Byakuya pushes inside, he finds Hina wasn’t joking: everyone’s there, even Toko. She sits in a corner by herself and tugs her hair and feverishly scribbles in a notepad, but she’s there. He lowers himself gingerly onto the couch beside Makoto, pretending to watch Kyoko and Hiro play billiards. 

“Wow, you really came,” Makoto says quietly. 

“I did.” 

“C-can I, like, I don’t know… give you a hug or something?” 

Byakuya considers lifting an eyebrow at him but keeps his face flat when he’s met with pain. “Whatever for?” 

“I mean, you definitely saved my life that time,” he says. 

He hums, turning stiffly toward Makoto. “I suppose that’s fine… but how—” 

Makoto launches himself into Byakuya with surprising vigor, crunching his back in a fearsome embrace. There’s a second where all his nerves fire in panic and even the most split fraction of a second where he considers biting Makoto like a cornered animal an appropriate response. As Makoto loosens his grip a little, though, Byakuya slowly feels some deep-wound parts of him beginning to unspool. 

“I’m sorry,” Makoto says, drawing away. 

“N-no, stay,” he says, then clears his throat. “I mean, you can stay.” 

He leans back into the couch with Makoto’s head on his shoulder. A warmth generates there, travelling through his blood and buzzing all the way in the tips of his toes. It doesn’t seal the cavern in his chest or break all the strangled nerves deep in his body, but he takes a deep breath—the first truly deep breath—he’s had in weeks. Carefully, he slips his arm around the smaller boy’s back. 

“I’m sorry about your face,” Makoto says quietly. 

Byakuya scoffs. He chews on words, and still they’re a little hard to bite out despite being the truth. “Your life isn’t more important than my pride.”

“Oh, wow.” 

He scoffs again. 

Kyoko beats Hiro three times in a row before Makoto talks again. Neither of them has moved. “What’s it like at first, getting turned into a werewolf?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, what did you feel like before you realized?” 

Byakuya swallows. “Feverish, overly warm. I had toothaches despite my pristine oral hygiene, and no dentist had an explanation for it. Sounds were suddenly too loud, smells too sharp. Et cetera.” He glances askew at him. “Why?” 

Makoto doesn’t answer for a minute. “Byakuya, I think I got.” 

He swears his heart stops. “What?” 

“Everything you said… I don’t know. I’ve just haven’t been feeling right. I can smell Hiro from here.” 

“Everyone can smell Hiro from a notable distance,” Byakuya whispers. 

“But Kyoko too?” 

Byakuya scowls. “Maybe not her.” 

Makoto cards a hand through his hair, shivering. “What do I do?” 

He’s not quite sure where the impulse comes from, but he squeezes Makoto’s shoulder and pulls him just a little closer, and he doesn’t squirm away. “You don’t have to worry about that right now,” he says softly. “We’re going to get out of here before that. I don’t know what you and Kyoko have been doing… but whatever it is, the mastermind felt threatened enough to try to dispose of you. You’re close.” 

“But after that?” 

Byakuya tries to shrug coolly. His heart rams. “I’m not saying I’m experienced myself. It’s clear I’m not. However, I can stay in touch, if you’d like, and help you how I may.” 

Makoto turns his nose into Byakuya’s shoulder. His chest expands with more air than he knew was possible, drinking in the smell of chocolate. 

His father would skin him alive. The siblings he defeated in battle only for him to cuddle the commoner boy he squandered everything for would want his head on a pike. 

Just for a little while, Byakuya Togami doesn’t care. 

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