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Jabberwock was once an ideal tourist destination for a reason.
Before global warming drowned the voices of those who called it a hoax, the island was a nice tropical temperature with a wonderful sea breeze and cool, lively jungles. The native mammals and reptiles were mostly chased away or disposed of for the sake of elderly property owners, who took a break from owning things to lay in a sand that they only rented for a while.
The birds, however, were allowed to stay, in all their colourful variations, and even kept in an aviary that was later reclaimed by the vines. Even after the supposed apocalypse, bird life on the island stayed strong, and showered its residents with beautiful song every day.
The beautiful song was shrieks, mostly, seasoned with clicks, calls and some admittedly fun whistles.
Every day meant every day, at sunrise, around six AM. Hajime is lucky enough to enjoy nature's living alarm clock, courtesy of one such feathered native of the island that had taken a particular liking to the railing right outside Hajime's window.
Hajime has never wished ill on a bird before, or even given them much thought at all. Now, as he lays in bed and tries to form an argument as to why he should step outside and start the day, and as the jolly bird mocks him with cheerful supposed singing, Hajime wishes things upon that bird that should frankly not be put in writing.
He hasn't been sleeping, is the thing.
He tries, as hard as he can, and he isn't sure what it is that keeps him from feeling better even when he spends all night in bed. He should feel at least a little bit rested, even if he never quite goes into deep sleep.
The symptoms, however, can't be denied; he's lethargic and listless, the circles under his eyes remind him of Gundham, his head hurts, and he needs to get up and face a new goddamned day anyway.
"I hate you," Hajime murmurs to the bird, who is too far away to hear and wouldn't care to, anyway.
When he opens the door, the bird flies away, as if its only job in life was to torture Hajime more than he'd already been tortured.
It leaves a lovely white stain behind as a goodbye.
Once, there was a storm, and Hajime wasn't sure how sturdy the cabins would turn out to be against the tropical winds and rain, so they had a little sleepover, just in case.
It was supposed to be a nice time and a way for all of them to sleep sound and safe.
Kazuichi woke Hajime up, because Kazuichi is a night owl and he had seen Hajime lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, and assumed it was a bout of insomnia. Misery loves company, as they say, and it wouldn't be the first time he and Kazuichi spent the darkest hours of the day together.
So he woke Hajime up.
Hajime could've killed him.
According to Kazuichi later on, Hajime was whispering something, stock-still and eyes open. Kazuichi had tried to talk to him, but Hajime was unresponsive, and 'acting really creepy', so Kazuichi shook him.
Next thing he knew, he was waking up on the floor, Sonia kneeling over him protectively. That would've been a great scenario for Kazuichi if not for the concussion.
Hajime had woken up and, in the span of a couple of seconds, fractured Kazuichi's index finger and kicked him in the head.
All Hajime knew was that he'd been confused, and the echo of pure terror made him wonder if he'd had a nightmare, and for a second after he gathered his senses he was sure he was back in a machine, being poked and prodded by people in white coats.
It was Akane's quick thinking and incredible instincts that ensured Kazuichi saw the calm after the storm. She'd splashed cold water on Hajime, and the shock snapped him out of it just as he put his hands around Kazuichi's throat.
"There was this lady that would sleep on our couch now and then," Akane explained, nonchalant as always. "Had to wake her up sometimes, but she'd freak out and start yellin' and grabbin' at us. So I poured water on her and then she'd snap out of it. She was a nice lady, really, she just freaked out sometimes."
Kazuichi insisted he'd be fine, and with painkillers and an ice pack, he would be.
Fuyuhiko explained to the rest of them, while Hajime locked himself in the bathroom, that it was a stress response- he'd seen it in his clan, and in his father. In himself, even.
Hajime refused to fall asleep near anyone after that.
But it seems he won't have a choice, soon.
It's been a week since he slept through the night. If he leans back too far, closes his eyes a bit too long, he starts to feel the comfortable lurch of sleep, followed by panic.
Kazuichi is durable and physically strong, but if he attacked any of the others, he could genuinely kill them before anyone snapped him out of it. He can't, can't let himself rest near them.
But when he goes to bed to finally sleep, inevitably, he comes to on his back, stiff and frozen and eyes open, with no idea how long he's spent like that. Vision comes back to him like he's zoning in from a deep thought, sound does so slowly, and movement even moreso. His heart thunders in his chest and he can't escape the echo of a feeling from a long time ago- the sense that he's just been trapped, and hurt and scared, for a long, long time.
Once he can move, he stands up and tries to distract himself. Rinse and repeat, every damn night.
For a week.
-
He had hopes that Kazuichi's lively chatter and generally loud voice would be a booster to his mood and psyche- and for a while, it worked. Hajime is so goddamn tired that he's hysterical, and while Kazuichi's smile is often dimmed by worried eyes, he plays along, gets Hajime laughing and arguing and debating semantics until he almost forgets how tired he is.
Kazuichi is a well of entertainment and comfortable bickering. He is also a goddamn good mechanic.
The banter dies off as Kazuichi does what he does best and zones into blueprints, bolts and screws, going back and forth between the plans and the parts themselves as he figures out a problem only he can see.
Hajime, for his part, can't see much at all. It seems his eyes are closed. When did that happen?
He tries to open them, eyebrows raised to high heavens as if they could tug his eyelids in place, but it's like they're glued together.
He just wants to rest his eyes for a second. Just a moment.
He sees, in front of him- above him- unrelenting, bright light, he hears the beeping of the monitors that grows more frantic as he tries to move his head and-
Clang.
Hajime startles at the pain and the noise, and even then, he takes too long to realize what happened. He looks around, expecting something- some kind of attack, something bad, though he's not sure what. His brain isn't running on enough power to figure out what exactly he's looking for. He just assumes, since it hurt and it was loud, that something bad must be going on.
All he sees is Kazuichi, pen in his mouth and his eyes wide in surprise, looking back at him.
"Huh?" Hajime says.
"You, ah," Kazuichi replies, "you sort of. Head-butted the side, there? You good?"
"…huh?"
"Dude."
Kazuichi comes over, but Hajime is already trying to scrub life into his mind through his face.
"I just, I'm just tired. I just closed my eyes for a second."
"Dude," Kazuichi repeats. "You can not be working on this machine when you're that tired- what if you get your hair caught, or you drop something on your foot? What would OSHA say?!"
Hajime tries to argue that their general existence isn't very OSHA compliant, but not only is it hard to argue with what he knows to be the truth, Kazuichi isn't hearing any of it, anyway.
"No way, man. I'm putting my foot down-" and here, he actually stomps his foot like a kid. Hajime snorts. "-see? Foot? Down. Go get some sleep, already, I'll keep working in the meanwhile. We'll get'er there, you'll see."
Kazuichi claps him on the shoulder, and leaves his hand there a bit too long for the brotherly effect to work.
His finger is still in a splinter.
Hajime promises to try to sleep, and he does try. An hour later, he's back on his feet.
-
He's physically more adept than your average human, but even he has his limits. Worse, he's unusually sensitive to his body and mind, and he can practically feel how both are starting to break down.
-
Exercise keeps you awake by necessity, and also tires you out. Maybe if he's simply too physically exhausted to wake up, he can make it through the night.
Through a few hours, at least.
So of course, he asks Akane to do some training with him.
She's not as intense in her workouts as she used to be, but she's more deliberate and meticulous, and endlessly more patient. Hajime is so proud of her when he has the emotional bandwidth to be- right now, he's only desperate.
They start with some stretches and yoga, and Hajime almost drifts off in every pose. He knows she notices, as she notices most things and certainly more things than she gets credit for. She doesn't say anything, but goes through the movements quicker. Hajime says nothing about it, just follows along.
He doesn't have time to fully fall asleep, standing on one leg and all, but his mind doesn't care and grabs every available moment to rest with desperation.
He sees, in glimpses, what must be the start of dreams, but never quite gets there.
The waves of sand suddenly rise up and turn into towers, change pose. He hears tinny music and water gurgling, change pose. Someone stands in his periphery, change pose. Someone leans right in his face and asks what's your name and he can't answer because he doesn't know anymore oh god he doesn't know his own name anymore-
At least this time, his head doesn't hit metal.
It's a good thing Akane is nearly as tall as him, otherwise the fall might've been worse. She catches him, probably not easily, but without a sound or visible effort. He sees her dark hair curling down her back as his cheek rests in the crook of her neck, all of his weight held up by her only.
His knees are too weak to move. He just breathes, for a bit, and he can hear how laboured it is, but he can't move just yet. He's pathetic, laying upright in Akane's arms, and he feels her straining- it's the only thing that stops him from giving up right then and there.
Together, they clumsily descend to their knees in the sand in a controlled fall.
Her hands flutter around him a bit- his forehead, his heart, tilting his head to the light. He blinks his eyes open and immediately squints, only catching a glimpse of her worried expression.
"Crap, don't do that," she moans, knocking her forehead into his shoulder. "I thought you had a freakin' heart attack or something! You started babblin' some nonsense, and then you just went peew- down like a sack of bricks. What's wrong with you?"
Hajime feels a tightness in his chest that could mean anything. Laughter, tears, appreciation that Akane caught him, regret that he's causing her to worry.
"I'm just tired," he croaks, "I haven't been sleeping."
She studies his face, and he gets the feeling she knows it's related to that incident from before.
But, god bless her, she says nothing about it. Only chastises him for trying to exercise when he was in such bad form, and how important sleep was for your immune system and digestion, and what would coach Nidai say?
She steers him to his cabin, and tucks him in like a kid. Even gives him a kiss on the cheek as she leaves.
Hajime thinks of his mom, but he can't remember if she ever tucked him in, so he just thinks of Akane instead, a much more loving figure, anyway. He draws on the warmth of her strength and her care, and hopes he can take the feeling with him into his dreams.
He fails.
-
Worse than worse, he's stuck. He doesn't know how to fix this.
Meditation, aromatherapy, white noise, all relaxing and helpful for his general problems, but none of them have helped him sleep through the night. He's so desperate, he might actually kill just to get a solid 8 hours.
But he won't. Especially not them.
-
"God, you- would you stop getting in my way?! You don't need to be involved in every little thing, you're just slowing me down when I'm trying to work!"
He's so tired, and he's felt so worn-out and empty, that when anger fills him up abruptly, it smothers everything else. For a second, he forgets all his good will and his friendship and his gratitude to Sonia, for everything she's done and continues to do.
He's just angry.
Is this how Fuyuhiko feels?
Hajime swears he hears the glass rattle with how hard he shouted at Sonia. The worst part is, he doesn't even realize what he's done, not right away. Like a petulant teenager, he keeps washing dishes aggressively, barely able to keep his grip on a single thing.
He expects her- would expect anyone- to storm off and refuse to talk to him, after that outburst. In a way, it's what he wants.
His hands shake, and he drops a cup. It shatters on the floor next to him, and he doesn't even react.
He wants to cry. He wishes he could cry.
He can't fathom tip-toeing around the glass, and getting the broom, and sweeping up the shards, and throwing them away- too many things he needs to take care of when he can barely keep himself from screaming.
He just looks out the window for a bit, at least long enough to be able to breathe without a hitch in his throat.
A gentle hand under his elbow guides his step.
"You are not wearing any shoes," Sonia says, "I will get it. Sit over here."
Her voice is smaller than normal, and the accent thicker. She's materialized next to him, broom in hand, and he slumps into the chair she gestures to without a peep.
He watches her clean up in silence. His vision swims, with something or other.
"I'm sorry," he finally stutters out, shame burning his ears hot and bright. "That was- I'm really sorry, I don't know why I did that. I'm just tired. I'm so tired."
It's not an excuse, he knows. He apologized, sure, but here he lets her keep cleaning up the mess in silence, and sits and stews in his shame while she tosses it out. Useless and spoiled.
If she yells at him right now, he really might cry.
But, it's Sonia. Of course she doesn't.
"Did you step on anything?" She asks. He shakes his head mutely.
She tsks softly. Hajime, silent and sullen, doesn't look up.
Before he knows it, his head is buried in soft fabric, and Sonia's elegant hand rests on the back of his head, while the other goes down his neck, rubbing tenderly at his shoulder.
"I know you're tired, my love. I can see it from miles away. I just want to help."
Hajime almost falls asleep with his head buried in Sonia's stomach, blanketed by her genuine grace, a force stronger than the apocalypse, apparently.
He feels consciousness empty out of him, suspending him in blissful non-existence for a second, and then that sick lurch is back, and he jerks back into his overworked body with a sharp inhale.
Sonia backs up but keeps her hold on him, scanning him over for a sign of discomfort.
"Hajime?"
He's still in the kitchen. It feels like he closed his eyes for an hour, at least, but it hasn't even been a minute.
The noise he makes is too watery to be a laugh, too dry to be a sob.
He has half a mind to ask to lay his head in her lap and have her sing him to sleep- he can't imagine anything better right now- but then he thinks of what will happen when her kindness compels her to wake him from his non-sleep, and of her white-gold hair all wet with blood.
"I just need some sleep," he whispers. "I just need to lay down."
She offers, of course, to stay with him.
He declines with a sad smile, holding her hand, as a thanks, as a sorry, before he goes.
-
It'll be fine, he reasons. Eventually, his body will simply give in and force him to sleep through whatever stupid trauma response is interrupting his beauty sleep.
Yes, he might lose his mind first, but he's been there, done that. Hurt feelings and bruises from tipping over are an acceptable sacrifice for keeping everyone else alive.
There's also a chance he'll die, sure, but it's objectively less of a chance than for anyone else.
The mistake is admitting it loud. Though, in his defense, he was too tired to really know what he was saying.
"That's it," Fuyuhiko says, slamming his fist down. "We're figuring this out tonight. No excuses."
"I said it's unlikely," Hajime groans and scrubs his hand over his face. Just that simple motion drains him, makes him dizzy, and feels as if it might knock him out all at once. "I'm still getting at least a couple of hours per night, or else I'd already be dead."
"If there's a chance-"
"There's more of a chance you die, if I do to you what I did to Kaz."
"I'm sturdy," Fuyuhiko says simply, and, when Hajime opens his mouth to argue, "and I'm stubborn. You don't want my help, you'll have to physically throw my ass out, and right now I doubt you'd be able to lift a wet kitten."
Hajime glares. Fuyuhiko glares harder. They stare at each other for the whole two seconds it takes Hajime's eyes to start burning, and he has to look away.
So here they are.
"You can't come near me," Hajime warns for the third time. Maybe fifth? Maybe more. Now that he has even a distant hope of a good sleep, it's like all his symptoms are piling on him at once. On the walk to his cabin, Fuyuhiko had to steer Hajime by the arm to keep him from wandering to the side somewhere.
"For fuck's sake, stop bossing me around and lay down. The sooner you fall asleep, the sooner we'll see if I make it through the night."
"Don't joke about that," Hajime answers heavily. "I'm serious, I only want you to watch and see-"
"Bed. Now. Or I'll knock you out myself."
"Yeah, you're real intimidating. Can you reach high enough, do you think?"
Fuyuhiko's eye widens in warning, but he scans Hajime over once, and seemingly swallows his rage.
"Once this sleep bullshit is solved, I'll kick your ass for that, you pathetic bastard. Don't forget it."
Despite their bickering, Fuyuhiko sits down in the armchair he dragged over, crosses his arms and an ankle over his knee, and waits.
A dog with a bone would give up sooner than Fuyuhiko, once he's bitten into something.
Hajime is hopelessly outmatched in this particular instance, when it comes not only to patience and stubbornness, but to the stamina to sit and do nothing and not pass out.
Fuyuhiko doesn't even need to wait long. Hajime really is pathetic.
He falls asleep the moment he closes his eyes.
They've done something to his brain. He doesn't know what- can't conceptualize anything. Like a child. All he knows is that he's afraid, can't move, can't see, and he has to keep talking. At some point he decided he mustn't stop talking. It's important. Automatic. Desperate, dying instinct, like screaming. Except he can't scream.
He can't scream.
Who's making that noise, then?
"-fuck, Hajime! Hajime Hinata, it's me, it's-"
Fuyuhiko.
He's on the ground, underneath Hajime, breathing hard, and there's a long, sharp piece of wood hovering over his jugular.
Hajime is holding the other end.
As if burnt, he throws it away, and it bangs loudly against the wall where it lands.
"Shit," Fuyuhiko breathes, "okay, that-"
"Go. You have to, have to go-" Hajime starts, trying to get off of his friend, but vertigo overtakes him when he goes upright too fast, and he falls against Fuyuhiko instead.
He's not sure if he really sleeps in those few moments he blacks out, or how long those moments are. He certainly doesn't feel rested when he gasps back to awareness, so fatigued by the adrenaline and movement that he can feel his entire being shaking.
He's in the same position, slumped over in Fuyuhiko's lap, forehead resting on his shoulder. He's cold and everything hurts and he wants to cry but he's just too tired.
"Hey, you with me?"
Hajime tries to tell him to go. All that comes out is a moan.
"Okay, this is- this is bad. C'mon, up you go, back to bed."
It takes Hajime three tries, with help, to even stand up. When they go near the bed, it takes all the willpower he has to dig his heels in.
"Idiot, you have to sleep-"
"Not with you," Hajime says as clearly as he can muster. "You have to go. I won't lie down until you leave."
Fuyuhiko says something, probably in protest- Hajime doesn't catch it.
"You saw, right?" he interrupts Fuyuhiko. "What happens when I. When I do… whatever it is, that makes me not sleep. That's all I wanted. Y'gotta go."
Fuyuhiko is a blur in Hajime's vision. His voice is unusually thick when he replies.
"We'll try again tomorrow. Got that? I'll go for now, but we'll figure something out tomorrow."
Hajime can barely get himself to nod.
Footsteps, a noise. Quiet. He's alone.
He falls into bed.
He sleeps.
They've done something to his brain. He doesn't know what- can't conceptualize anything. Like a child. All he knows is that he's afraid, can't move, can't see, and he has to keep talking. At some point he decided…
What little sleep he gets that night is, at least, enough to bring him a tiny bit of clarity. As usual, he doesn't wake up so much as come to, frozen stiff, afraid. His eyes burn and his head swims and the six AM bird is singing and for a desperate moment, Hajime wishes he'd never wake up again.
So he sits up. The longer he lays there, the harder it is to keep those thoughts away.
Reaching for his desk, he unscrews the cap of a bottle of sandalwood body oil he found in a cupboard somewhere, left by someone long gone. It's not his scent of choice, but he can't exactly run to the store to buy something more subtle.
Originally, he carried it around to breathe in during calm, safe moments. Having tea with his friends, the beach at night, right after it rained- he tried to associate the smell of the oil with any and all comfort, comfort that he could reach for when his anxiety ramped up or his mind got dark and distant.
For that, it worked. But during his sleepless nights, by the time he was aware enough to move and see the bottle on the nightstand, he was already past the worst stage and wide awake to boot, and so could never find out if the smell would help him get back to sleep.
Wherever his mind went during those barely-lucid moments, it was too far to remember comfort of any kind.
He tries to reach into that comfort now, at least enough to stop thinking those dark thoughts. He pictures the beach, the forest, his friends, but by now, the scent is beginning to remind him more of the restless nights and desperation.
"What's that?" Hajime hears from the doorway.
He hadn't even heard any knocking. True, maybe Fuyuhiko hadn't even tried to knock, but Hajime wouldn't be surprised if he'd just missed the sound. He might've been sitting and clutching the oil for a minute or an hour all the same.
"Aromatherapy," Hajime rasps. "It doesn't work, though."
"Aroma…" Fuyuhiko mumbles, walking across the cottage and sitting back down into his chair from last night.
"You can't stay with me again," Hajime says.
"Can and will," Fuyuhiko says, and puts up a hand when Hajime rolls his eyes and gets ready to argue. "Look, let's put a pin in that. Tell me what that old lady smell is supposed to do."
Hajime tells him.
"It works okay when I feel like I might dissociate- that's when I start fading out and going blank," he explains, knowing Fuyuhiko is well acquainted with Hajime in that state, "and when I just feel really shitty. But I can't grab it if I can't move. And when I wake up like last night, I don't even really know if I'm awake, anyway."
Fuyuhiko nods along, gaze directed somewhere to the distance while he thinks.
"But in theory, it might calm you down enough to go back to sleep when you freeze up? So you could get some real sleep?"
"In theory," Hajime replies, and then, "No. You are not staying with me again, Fuyuhiko, I nearly killed you."
"It was my bad," Fuyuhiko waves him off- as if it's something to wave off- "I thought it was fine if I didn't get close, so I used a broom. Must've jostled you too hard, you snapped it right in half."
"Doesn't matter. I'm not risking your life."
Fuyuhiko rolls his good eye hard enough to make up for the other one.
"My life isn't yours to risk," he hisses, interrupting Hajime before he even opens his mouth. "No, shut up. You're killing yourself, trying to deal with this alone when you clearly fucking can't. I'm gonna figure this shit out, one way or another, and you can't stop me."
"Fuyuhiko," Hajime pleads, "if I hurt you, I don't- I wouldn't come back from it. Don't make me go through that. If anything would kill me…"
Hajime trails off. The bottle spins anxiously in his fidgeting hands.
Outside is quiet again. The bird must have flown away when Fuyuhiko arrived.
"You never asked me about last night," Fuyuhiko finally says, breaking the silence.
Hajime looks up, but doesn't prod. Fuyuhiko always gets to the point, sooner or later.
"When you freeze up like that… last night, it's like you were awake and not, at the same time. You didn't hear me, didn't react to my hand when I waved it in front of you, even though your eyes were open. You were just frozen still, but you kept… trying to talk."
At some point he decided, he mustn't stop talking, he has to make them understand…
"Didn't really make much of a sound, but your mouth was moving, and I got the gist of it. You kept saying, 'I changed my mind. I want to go home.' Over and over. …You were begging."
Maybe it's a testament to Hajime's exhaustion that he can't find it in him to react. Maybe his subconscious already knew, from living through it so often.
Either way, all he does is sigh.
"Were you dreaming about… the project?" Fuyuhiko asks.
"I don't know," Hajime says, truthfully. "I don't really remember anything when I wake up, but I think it's just, uh…"
It's almost instinct to sugarcoat it, for his own sake and other's, but the prettier words die before he can say them. If anyone should know the ugly truth, he supposes it's Fuyuhiko.
"I think I must've said that when they were doing the experiments. They basically shut down most functions of my brain, one at a time, depending on what they needed to keep active for observation. Sometimes I was awake, sometimes…well, I wouldn't know. I only remember when I was awake, obviously. But I kept… I kept asking. Begging, I guess. It was all I thought about, even when they cut off my vocal chords, to keep trying to tell them… I guess I was so out of it I thought they'd actually care. Like it was all a misunderstanding."
He laughs. It's a dry, empty sound, and Fuyuhiko, unamused, doesn't echo it; in fact, he looks almost close to tears. Or killing someone.
"I guess I must've held onto that notion so hard that when I sleep- when my brain shuts down- it goes back to that time. Tries to keep me awake to talk to ghosts," Hajime finishes. "That's probably why I keep attacking whoever comes near me in that state. I'm trying to run."
Fuyuhiko's fists are clenched so tight, Hajime sees them shaking. He might start bleeding soon. It's a miracle nothing's been punched, yet, actually; the anger management exercises must be working.
"That. That's why I'm not leaving," Fuyuhiko says thickly, and clears his throat.
"If I can't kill every single motherfucker that ever came near you- and believe me, I wish I could- the least I can do is- is stop you from reliving it every night. At least I can try. Don't make me sit by and do nothing; don't make me go through that. I'll be careful, just let me try."
God, Hajime is tired. Of arguing, of listening, of convincing himself not to give in. The only strength he has goes into closing his eyes, like he can block out the temptation of surrendering.
Something lurches, and he feels sick, but then the dizzying sensation slows into a more gentle descent. He'd forgotten how easily he relaxes around Fuyuhiko, and now it's too late to resist.
"I've got you," he hears as if through water, "I've got you."
Fuyuhiko, when he lets himself, has this soft, intensely empathetic tone to his voice.
Not only that, but Hajime is finding that it has a lulling quality as well, reminding him of quiet moments and late night talks.
Closing his eyes even for a moment was a mistake. Hajime is already starting to drift, convinced somewhere in his core, too deep for his higher functions to intervene, that it's okay, that he's safe…
And then he's back trying to bargain for his freedom, pleading for it while he still has a voice and even after, because surely, if they could just understand-
"I didn't come near you," he hears in the dark. The voice sounds upset. "You didn't hear me or see anything. I didn't touch you, but I think it's the only thing that works."
Hajime tries to sit up. He might say something, he might not. The dark and the soothing sounds are already making him lose his fight for wakefulness.
"It's okay. Try again. Sleep."
A light weight on his chest, pushing him down. Touching it feels like soft, warm skin. It's not unwelcome. He was never awake for anything done to his heart.
It feels nice, that weight.
When they worked on his head, that was the worst. It was the only time he managed to break free for even a second, when he heard the high pitched whine of a bone saw. By then, he'd finally realized that they could see him trying to talk, trying to catch their eyes with his own bloodshot ones. They just didn't listen, and didn't see him. Not for himself, at least.
So he stopped seeing them as people, too.
After they pieced his head back together, he didn't really care, anymore. About understanding, or being understood, or anything else. It was peaceful.
Hajime doesn't wish he could go back to that uncaring peace.
But it's a near thing.
At least this time, when he wakes up, it's not to the sunrise and that goddamned bird. It's somewhere around nine in the morning, judging by the sun's position, so still annoyingly bright, but at least it's a change. He's gotten an additional few hours of non-sleep that ought to tide him over for now.
"I feel a bit better. Thanks. It's been a while since I slept until light," Hajime croaks, running a hand through his greasy hair. He's been worried about passing out and banging his head on the porcelain, so he's been making do with washcloth showers for a bit.
"I'm at least okay for today," Hajime goes on, rather pointedly. "So you should probably go take a nap."
Fuyuhiko bites his lip, staring into the distance again.
This means he's thinking about something, which means…
"I wanna try one more time."
There it is.
Hajime might kill Fuyuhiko while fully awake, at this point… no, that's unfair. But he can't help the very annoyed sigh he lets out.
"Have you considered that maybe, for once, you can't force things to go your way? Maybe you aren't the executive fucking power of everything; maybe you even really suck at some things."
Hajime wishes he could say he doesn't sound as harsh as the words themselves are, but it's the opposite. His tired, brittle voice doesn't do justice to how fed up he is with everything.
"Oh, I'm aware," Fuyuhiko bites back. "But I'm also aware you're not a great executive power of yourself, right now. So I wanna try again. One last time."
"It's daylight. It's too bright and too early to be sleeping again."
"Please," Fuyuhiko scoffs, "you still look ready to keel over. Don't even try to convince me you wouldn't sleep right now, if you could."
"Well, I can't, and I'm tired of trying to do the one thing in the world I consistently fail at when I keep telling you I can't! And I'm sick of you making me your problem! You're just making us both fail."
Fuyuhiko, remarkably, takes the shouting silently and without flinching.
Hajime doesn't feel any better.
"...One more time. All I ask. Then I'll leave you alone."
Fuyuhiko sounds exhausted, himself. He's been losing sleep over this, too; he came over before 6 in the morning after barely sleeping the night before, just to check on Hajime.
Hajime is supposed to be the one who makes things work, but he's making everything worse, and now he's snapping at his closest friend. Again.
Damn it.
"... sorry."
"Don't be. If you wanna make it up to me, let's go."
"Go?" Hajime asks. "Where?"
"Well, you're probably sick of waking up in the same place every time. We're going to my cabin. It's got a bit more shade, and a change of scenery might help."
It's something. Hajime is still feeling the regret of being as harsh as he was, and Fuyuhiko is not above using guilt as leverage, if Hajime keeps resisting. So he follows.
The sunlight stings his eyes like needles. The constant, pounding headache abruptly gets worse, and Hajime whimpers as he squeezes his eyes shut and digs his knuckles into the sockets- it doesn't alleviate the pain, but it's pain that he controls, at least.
"Come on," he hears down to his left, and feels a soft hand on the small of his back. "It'll be better inside."
He stumbles on with his eyes mostly shut, and with the guidance, he doesn't trip or fall.
___
Fuyuhiko's cabin is ever so slightly cooler in the shade, near the jungle. The change does help a bit, not with the exhaustion, but with the undercurrent of anger that follows it. Hajime hates the sight of these walls less than his own.
If the situation were different, Hajime might be amused how Fuyuhiko quickly tidies up a bit of mess here and there. Hajime knows, of course, that much like many young men, Fuyuhiko sometimes let the space around him get…messy, despite how hard he held onto his collected outward appearance. He also doesn't let people into his cabin very often- which is fair, because for all that their boundaries have all but evaporated in their shared isolation, Fuyuhiko is a very private person, and is more than allowed a single private space on the island.
But he lets Hajime in, shakes out the bedspread for him- and removes a knife from under the pillow with a shrug.
"Force of habit, you know how it is. Don't have time to do laundry, obviously, so you'll just have to deal."
Hajime isn't listening to half of it. Maybe Fuyuhiko was right about the change of scenery, or maybe it's because of the little pieces of him all around the room, but Hajime is already fading.
Only common courtesy keeps him standing, but Fuyuhiko has never been very courteous in the traditional sense.
"Would you-" he grabs Hajime and steers him to the bed, "-sit your ass down, and then lay it down and sleep."
He pushes Hajime to sit by pressing on his shoulders, then pushes him over- gentler, this time- with a hand to the chest. All the movement is too much for Hajime to keep up with, and he goes along easily and limp like a marionette.
More noise. He's not asleep enough to react when he feels a hand under his neck, lifting his head gently. His shirt is pulled off, body maneuvered until he's more or less lying down properly.
The pillow smells different. The sheets, too.
Smell is a powerful thing, when it comes to memory, and might be the strongest route to recovering or instigating one. Who hasn't smelled autumn in the air and thought of the first day of school, or instantly recognised their mother's perfume?
If this were to go wrong, Hajime might have nothing left than Fuyuhiko's fading scent, and a ring on his finger. He already knows it's too late to fight, but he can- like before- just barely muster the strength to beg.
Please, he asks something that might be listening, please let this work. Please let Fuyuhiko's courage and dumb determination somehow win. Please let him be strong enough to kill me before I kill him.
"Sleep tight," someone wishes into the air.
He sleeps.
They've done something to his brain. He doesn't know what- can't conceptualize anything. Like a child. All he knows is that he's afraid, can't move, can't see, and he has to keep talking. Maybe this time, someone will hear him. Maybe they'll listen. Maybe they won't-
Sandalwood.
“-hear you, God damn it, I know, I won't let anyone-
-hurt him, parts of him he never knew existed hurt, in a detached way that is so much worse than normal pain, because even that is being taken away and he's-
Sandalwood.
“-safe. It's okay. It's okay. No one is here to hurt you. You're-”
-stuck in a machine, tied up by tendrils inside his veins, pumping him full of lethargy and apathy. Every time he shifts, he feels the needles shift inside him too. He's bound to the ever wakeful beeping mechanisms around him and he wants to go-
Sandalwood.
“-back, lay down, close your-”
-eyes, his eyes, they can't see- he knows he's not blind, there is stimuli- it's the brain that isn't connected, he can no longer trust his senses, he barely even understands the concept of concepts and he's just so-
Sandalwood.
“-scared, don't be- I'm here, okay, and I won't let them- I won't-”
-stop, they never stop, the only thing he sees when he's awake is faceless faces and bright fluorescent lights and he doesn't want to be awake anymore he just wants to-
Sandalwood.
“-sleep-”
-sleep-
Sandalwood.
“I've got you.”
-he's got you.
Sandalwood.
"I'm right here."
Sandalwood.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Sandalwood.
“I promise.”
Sandalwood.
Safety.
Sleep.
-
Hajime wakes up to the sound of waves on the shore, and nothing else.
He thinks he's still dreaming, for a second, and waits for the jolt back to reality, but nothing disturbs him. That, in itself, is such a surprise that he wakes up properly.
The deep breath he takes shakes him to the very nerves, like he's a moth just emerging from the cocoon.
The sounds, shapes and colours take a moment to come together. The scent finishes the job.
Sandalwood. The beach, his cabin, the rain, his friends.
Fuyuhiko.
“Well well,” the freckled face grins. “Look who's awake.”
Hajime sits up, blissfully stiff, as if that was ever something desirable. He feels like he's been ill and finally got better, sore from the sickness but so, so appreciative of the clarity he feels. He's raw, and remade.
He can think. He isn't dizzy. He isn't afraid.
“How long was I out?”
It all comes back to him in parts and pieces, even as he asks his question. The light has changed, but he doesn't care to analyze it for the exact time, so comfortably worn is he. The room has been dimmed further with blankets and clothes stuffed in the gaps where the light could try to sneak in. The dark, however slight, has never been so beautiful.
“It's afternoon. You slept for a full five hours, give or take a…few interruptions. How do you feel?”
Five hours, Hajime thinks. That's a long time. He can't remember the last time he lost five hours to anything other than a machine.
“...tired,” he answers. “In a good way, though. Like I could lay in bed all day…”
He finally manages to focus his thoughts- Fuyuhiko, right- Fuyuhiko is there.
He's smiling. Not even grinning, just smiling, bags under his eyes, crumpled shirt and no shoes, no eyepatch and no frown, smiling.
He smells like sandalwood.
"You smell like sandalwood."
"Yeah," Fuyuhiko replies, "I didn't want to get too close to you or bump you on accident, but there was no other way to let you smell it without upending the whole thing over your face." He lifts a pale wrist. "So I just put some on."
Hajime shuffles a bit closer, and sure enough, there it is.
"…didn't you say it was an old lady smell?"
Fuyuhiko's wrist falls along with his face.
"I'm not the one who picked it out, you mouthy bastard. You just woke up and you're already disrespecting me. Unbelievable. Do you know what I would do if you were my underling?"
Hajime feels himself grin and allows himself to close his eyes again, rubbing his head into the pillow, softer than he swears he's ever felt before.
"Mmm… sorry. 'M tired, don't know what I'm saying…"
“Go ahead, then,” Fuyuhiko says, all insult evidently forgiven. For now, at least.
“Rest some more. You've got time. And you've got a lot of sleep to catch up on.”
Hajime sighs. It's so tempting. Every inch of his being craves to give in and sink into the mattress, let the rushing sound of the wind and sea rock him to sleep.
But.
“Mm.”
He could make himself understood, this time. But, well, he's simply too lazy for words.
He will be heard, regardless.
“Are you kidding? The sheets are gross from your stupid high body temp, I'll stay right here.”
Hajime can move, so he does. His arm is free and only tethered by the sheets wrapped around his shoulders. He reaches out, knowing he'll be met.
“You're a big baby, you know that?”
Hajime knows.
He knows who he is, where he is. He knows he's safe.
He knows who it is that, despite the irate tone, dips the mattress next to him and settles into the empty by his heart.
“Alright, alright. I guess we could both use some sleep.”
Hajime shuffles in closer. It's not just Fuyuhiko's wrist that smells like oil, but the spot behind his ear, right behind his jaw, too, and his collarbones. So that's about where Hajime lays down his weary head.
Hajime, in the twilight of sleep, doesn't wonder why Fuyuhiko would be so thorough, or why he knows the proper places to dab oil onto oneself, any more than he wonders why Fuyuhiko risks his life and loses sleep over someone like Hajime.
It's just how he is, and Hajime sure won't complain.
The smell of the oil is perfect in combination with the softness of the sheets and the natural scent of Fuyuhiko's skin.
It's less empty, and more natural. Warmer.
Real, familiar, and safe.
Sandalwood.
-
From a bit of distance, and with a melodious accompaniment of soft, sleepy breathing, the birdsong really isn't so bad.
-
Once they're fully rested, soft and happy in the dark; then, and only then, does Fuyuhiko slug him in the shoulder for the dig at his height.