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The second Denji's mouth unlatches from Power's skin, she starts whining again. He laps up the last bit of blood he can stomach from the row of puncture wounds in her shoulder and wipes the corner of his lip with his thumb.
"Enough already."
He licks the taste of metal off his front teeth and shifts his weight to roll off of her, but her ankles are still locked together at the small of his back and she's grappling his shirt tight enough to throw him. He sighs.
It's not that he minds drinking her blood, exactly, but he doesn't want to feed into her delusion that she's indebted to him somehow. On the other hand, it does genuinely pacify her most nights, and as the darkness stretches on that's usually too enticing a prospect for either of them to pass up.
As if she didn't hear him, she presses her forehead into the side of his neck, trembling like she's in withdrawal. One of her horns nicks the shell of Denji's ear, but he just sighs again, craning his neck to check the alarm clock by their bed. It's just past one now, and it's so warm in their little room Denji could swear the walls are sweating.
The air is thick with fear, neither of them have slept, Denji's shirt is sticky with snot and tears, and Power is living up to her name with how tightly she's crushing him to her body.
"Powy," he drawls, sliding a hand under the back of her head. Her whimpers get a little louder, her grip a little harder. "Come on, let go."
"No!" she wails, and the desperation in her voice would break Denji's heart if these past few days hadn't forced him to suck it up and get used to it. He doesn't let himself wonder if Power may never go back to normal. "You can't! Please don't leave!"
Denji can't help but roll his eyes. "Who said anything about leaving? My neck is killing me. Let me roll over."
"No! No! No! You have to hold me! You have to look after me or it'll get me!"
"I will! Just let me go for a sec, ya lunatic."
Slowly, the thin arms anchored around his shoulders loosen until they drop to her sides. She looks so small, shivering in her own cold sweat. Her eyes are just about swollen shut with how much she's been crying. He's just grateful she's not pissing herself anymore.
"Man, you're really messed up about this, huh," he mumbles, swiping his thumb across her wet cheek. She's too busy sobbing weakly to answer, if she even heard him in the first place.
Denji tips his body left until he's on his side facing her. One arm is crooked under his head. The other reaches out.
"C'mere," he says. "I gotcha."
Power squeezes her eyes shut, still sobbing as her exhausted body goes through the motions of rolling onto her side and backing up into his chest. His arm falls around her; she presses his wrist against her heart. He can feel her shaky breath on his knuckles and scoots closer, her hair tickling his nose. It smells significantly better than it has the past few nights. He's glad he went through the ordeal of bathing her.
"I'm sorry…"
Denji exhales through his nose, closing his eyes. "What for?"
She's apologized over and over the past few days, but every time it's for something new; some perceived minute slight against him that blends into the dark with everything else that keeps her up at night.
Power hiccups for a minute before answering. Denji gently nuzzles the back of her head and yawns.
Eventually, Power says, "I can't stop being scared."
"'S'not your fault," Denji grumbles. "Shit's scary."
" You didn't get scared."
"Sure I did."
"Liar." Her voice is breaking again; she already sounds like she smokes two packs a day. "Denji, you liar..."
"For fuck's sake," Denji groans, pulling her closer. "Just shhh. Breathe."
"It's watching me." Power's teeth are chattering now. "It's going to - to kill me. To take me back to hell."
Denji tries to keep his voice calm. He knows by now that he can't reason her fears away. No matter how many times he pulls back the duvet and checks the empty space under their bed, they're still there. Maybe the only way to work through them is to work with them.
"If it comes for you, I'll protect you," Denji tells her. It's not just a platitude, either. "And if it takes you, I'll get you back. And don't forget, Aki's here, too. He wouldn't let anything happen to you."
He can feel her shoulders quake and her chest spasm with silent hiccups.
"And you're strong," Denji goes on. "It'd have to be pretty fuckin' dumb to mess with you. You can do anything. Alright?"
"Denji…" She flips around, wet face burrowing into his collarbone. Denji's chin and arms tuck her in. He runs his hot palms over her back, adjusting her shirt where it rode up so she doesn't get cold whenever her sweat evaporates. He hooks his toes into the blanket bunched at the foot of the bed and pulls it up, draping it over the slim crescent of Power's body.
Caring about someone like this - the hard way, the way that makes you lose sleep and the ability to do so much as take a shit in peace - is new to him, and a complete pain in the ass. But the second the initial shock of Makima's offer to take him on a trip with her wore off, he knew he had to buckle down and say no. He knew he had to stay. And feeling Power shiver against him in the dark, he knows he'd choose this every time. He wouldn't think twice. This is the first time in a long time that he's had people to lose.
"I gotcha," Denji murmurs. "You're always safe with me, 'kay?"
And for the first time, instead of apologizing, Power says, "Thank you."
They sleep.
In the morning, Denji wakes up to the sound of rain. He used to hate that, because it usually meant water would have gotten through the cracks in the roof he was squatting under and soaked him to his socks. But when you're warm and safe in bed - a real, actual bed - with one of the people you care about most in the world, it's not so bad.
Except Power's not here.
The realization douses him like a splash of cold water. Denji's head swings up from the pillow as he squints through the gray morning light. Power's not anywhere in the room.
He hasn't woken up alone in months. He hasn't missed it.
Groaning, Denji drags himself out of bed, knowing he won't be able to get back to sleep if he doesn't know where she is.
Fucking Power. Clings to him like a baby one minute, vanishes the next. He trudges into the living room scratching his belly under his shirt, ready to bitch.
By the window, Aki lifts a finger to his lips.
Power's head is in his lap, body curled on the floor perpendicular to his. Meowy is snoozing in the dip of her waist.
Seemingly satisfied that Denji won't wake her after his silent warning, Aki places his hand back on Power's head.
"I came to check on you two about 45 minutes ago. She was getting fussy," he explains, voice hushed. Denji would never tell him, but he's got a nice voice. It's the same kind of quiet as a park blanketed in snow before droves of kids come out to play in it. "I took her out here to watch the sunrise, but, well. The sky's not cooperating."
Denji avoids all the squeakiest floorboards as he steps over, squatting next to Power to scratch behind Meowy's ear. Gradually, she starts to purr. Power breathes through her mouth, drooling onto Aki's thigh.
"I guess it was just bright enough to set her at ease." A little smile Denji's not sure Aki even knows is there begins to curve his lips.
"Geez, when she's out, she's out." Denji's tempted to pinch the exposed skin of her belly, but finds himself pulling her shirt down to cover it instead. Seriously, she's gonna catch a cold one of these days. And with how clingy she's being, she's gonna pass it right on to him and Aki.
"She's so small," Aki says. His hand smooths over her hair in short, aborted strokes, like he's not used to touching someone this way; the way where he doesn't have a reason to except that he likes it. Denji watches the movement of his hand until Aki glances up at him through the dark curtain of his hair. "You both are."
Denji cocks his head. "The fuck did that come from?"
"Language."
"I've heard you say fuck!"
Aki cups his hand over Power's ear, his eyes narrowed. " Volume ."
"Shit." Fuck. "Sorry."
Aki exhales. "It came from nowhere. It just…sneaks up on me sometimes." He glances down at the little devil in his lap, eyes too wistful for someone with a steadily growing puddle of saliva on his pant leg. He sighs again, softer this time; kinder.
"You flip through manga with the same hands that kill. The same hands that protect your lives. At night you cry like newborns, but come morning we stuff you in suits and pretend you're all grown up."
"I don't cry at night."
"Sure you don't." Aki's words are quiet, but so is drowning. "This whole situation…It's perverse."
Denji wrinkles his nose, unsure what any of this has to do with sex.
"Perverse as in contradictory," Aki adds. "Contradictory as in wrong."
"Oh. Well, hey, we're only killing in self defense. Nothin' wrong with that in my book."
"You're missing my point, Denji." He gives the consonants a hard edge. Denji's never been to school, but this must be what getting reprimanded by a teacher feels like.
Aki's gaze holds him and squeezes until after a long moment he blinks, turning his face to the window with a quiet hmm. The moment's over, the unsaid hanging between them like a raindrop off the windowsill. It'll fall sooner or later, but not yet. In the meantime, his hand keeps petting Power's hair.
Denji follows his stare outside to the comfortable gloom of the city, idly bouncing his bent knees. A sudden spark of affection he can't quite trace to its origin warms his chest and he wonders if it would be weird to crawl next to Aki and lean his head on his shoulder, just for a while. If Aki would pet his hair, too. He scratches the top of Meowy's head.
"Aki…?"
Without either of them realizing it, Power had reached up to tug at a strand of Aki's hair. Her swollen eyes blink up at him. Aki's hand stills, now cradling her head. Power twists her neck to nuzzle his palm. Denji watches his face melt and rolls his eyes, performing annoyance before realizing he doesn't feel any.
"Breakfast…?"
Aki doesn't laugh, but he releases a quick exhale through his nose.
"What a pain you are," he tells her, and his voice is so tender it makes Denji want to start bawling.
Except Aki, fond as his words sounded, was not kidding even a little bit: Power is as much a pain to feed these days as she is to put to bed. Denji has to sit her between his legs and pin her back to his chest while Aki practically begs her to take a break from crying and eat the bacon she requested. One tedious forkful at a time, Aki breaks through, and Power starts nodding off not long after she's cleared her plate.
"Oh hell the fuck no." Denji grabs her by one of her horns before her tear-stained cheek makes contact with the table. "You're helping me with dish-duty this time."
Power warbles in despair, eyes watering again.
Denji reminds himself that this is for her own good. "Come on." He sways her head back and forth by the horn. "You can't sleep anymore or you'll be up all night again. And who's gonna have to stay up with you, huh?"
"Death," Power moans, legs wobbling like a baby deer's as she lets him drag her to the kitchen. "Pain and agony and blood and darkness."
"Yeah, yeah. Scrub that pan -- with the soft side of the sponge, or else it'll scratch the tef - teflin? Teflun." Denji wrinkles his brow, looking up at the ceiling in thought. "Tef…Fuck it. Uh, the non-stick shit that gives you cancer." He squirts a liberal amount of dish soap onto the sponge and plops it into Power's hand
"What's cancer?" Power sniffles.
"Something you don't need to worry about," Aki chimes in from across the bar behind them, elbow braced on its coffee-stained surface. "We'd be miraculously lucky to live long enough for microplastics to be the thing that kill us."
Denji rolls his eyes as he rinses his plate under the running faucet. "Looking forward to it."
"What's microplastics?" Power huffs, scrubbing at a clump of gristle.
"You know plastic?"
"Yeah?"
"Okay so it's like that, but smaller. So small you swallow it or inhale it or whatever and you don't even notice. And then it builds and builds and builds up inside you for decades until your body is like a box of loose lego pieces and you get cancer and die."
" Denji ," Aki warns him.
"What? You're the one who told me that!"
"You're going to scare her."
Power shrieks, sticking her tongue out. "Do you see any? Do you see any plastics?"
"I keep telling you the only thing wrong with your mouth is that your breath reeks."
" You reek!"
"No, you reek."
"No," Power says, a strange oblong shadow falling over the dish Denji's scrubbing. He turns his head to look at her only to find that she's swung the frying pan over her shoulder like a bat -- and that she looks ready to swing it squarely at his head next.
Denji yelps, ducking away. "Just brush your teeth you crazy bitch!"
She swings. "No! The bathroom is scary!"
Aki rubs his temple with two fingers. "Power, don't hit Denji with my kitchenware. Denji, don't call her names."
Denji jerks a finger at her and proclaims, " She started it," but his voice is mysteriously doubled until he realizes it was overlayed by Power's accusing him of the same thing. He shoves her head and makes a show of retching when she angles her face to lick his palm.
"It's like you two were artificially created in a lab for the sole purpose of making my life harder," Aki says, finally standing up. "Power, I'm going to bring you your toothbrush so you can brush your teeth here while Denji and I finish up the dishes." He levels a finger and a grim stare at her. "And you're going to brush until we're done, understood?"
Power whines, high and shrill and annoyingly genuine in her despair, but Aki is already disappearing down the hall. She accepts the toothbrush and toothpaste with a defeated breath but doesn't argue any further, sulking up on the countertop and brushing while Aki picks up where she left off.
Denji eyes the empty sleeve hanging limp off Aki's left shoulder for a moment. "You cooked," he points out. "You shouldn't have to do dishes too."
"It's fine," Aki says. He sets a plate down on the counter and scrubs. With no second hand to hold it in place, it slides over the surface like an air hockey puck. Denji watches Power watching Aki, the legs she's been letting dangle off the edge of the counter slowly going still.
Denji sets aside his plate to dry and feels a pang of guilt ring hollow in his chest. He glances back to where Aki's left arm used to be.
"Does it hurt?" he asks.
"No," Aki replies. He lifts the soapy plate up off the counter and guides it to his left. Without warning, he lets it drop; it cracks in two - one half tumbling into the sink, the other to the kitchen floor - before both halves shatter completely.
Aki looks down, dumbfounded, as if he didn't clearly just do that on purpose. Then his lone hand closes around the loose fabric of his left sleeve and Denji realizes that he actually didn't.
"Hah," Aki breathes, a rueful smile on his face. For a minute, Denji waits for him to say more, but the room stays silent. Aki's hand trails up, gripping his shoulder and gritting his teeth. Maybe there's nothing to say.
Denji picks up the pieces in the sink first, dropping them into his flat palm one by one.
"You'll cut yourself," Aki says, a barely-detectable shudder in his breath.
Denji shrugs. "More blood for Power to drink."
Power leans in to study Aki's face, toothbrush hanging out of the corner of her mouth.
"Do you wanna play with Meowy?" she asks, her voice uncharacteristically gentle.
"I'm fine," Aki repeats, angling his face away from her.
"Do you wanna watch TV?" she goes on.
Aki closes his eyes. "I want to do the goddamn dishes."
Power takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. "I finished brushing my teeth, see?" She opens it wide, foamy Colgate still covering her tongue. Aki sighs, turning back to look at her.
"That's great, Power. Go ahead and spit." He shuffles over to the bar so she can reach the sink. Denji yanks the last porcelain shard away just before Power spits down the drain.
"He's so full of shit," Denji whispers to her as she runs the tap. He dumps his handful of shards in the trash.
"So full of shit," she agrees.
Aki makes an incredulous noise behind them. "I can hear you, you know."
Yeah, whatever. Denji grabs the broom and dustpan in the corner and sweeps up the shards on the floor before dumping them in the trash with the rest. Power straightens her spine, resuming the idle swinging of her legs as she chews on her toothbrush.
"I don't get why your arm hurts after it got chopped off," she says after a moment.
Denji throws a dishrag at her head. "It hurts because it got chopped off, dumbass."
"I'm not a dumbass, dumbass!" Power yanks the rag off her horns and twists. "If the arm is gone, where does the pain go?" Lightning-quick, she whips Denji's ass with the towel in retaliation. "Riddle me that!"
He yelps, jumping back. "The hell are you talking about? It goes to the - to the…" His jaw goes slack for a moment. "Where does the pain go?" he finally asks, turning to Aki.
Aki, whose hand is covering his face, his shoulders shaking.
Denji's stomach drops. Then he realizes Aki isn't crying.
"Idiots," Aki laughs under his breath, hand revealing a corner of the smile tucked behind it. His eyes are shining, but he hasn't shed a tear. He steps back over to the sink, puts his hand on Denji's shoulder, and squeezes.
Something in Denji's chest unclenches and he realizes he's been holding his breath without meaning to.
Power drapes herself over Aki's shoulders from behind. "No but really, where does the pain go?"
He bumps his head into her cheek, not unlike how Meowy does when you pet her just right, and lifts his hand to ruffle Denji's hair.
"With you two around?" An easy smile spreads his lips. "Right in my ass."
That night, exhaustion after another crying fit makes Power fall asleep watching some trashy soap opera on TV. Her feet are propped up on Denji's shoulders, ass parked between his legs, one of which is hanging off the side of the couch so she has enough room. Meowy is asleep and purring in the crook of her neck.
Denji knows his back is gonna kill him if he stays pinned like this all night, but for now the position is still dangerously comfortable. Between the idle chatter on the TV, Meowy's purring, and Power's snoring, there's not one sound for Denji to focus on, so it all blends into a wash of white noise. Distantly, he realizes his eyes have closed.
The warm pressure of a hand slowly descends on the top of his head.
"Denji?"
Aki.
Denji tries to respond, but can't manage anything more than a low rumble in the back of his throat. His eyes stay shut.
A faint chuckle. Light fingers scratching his hair. "Should I leave the TV on until you fall asleep?"
"Mhm."
"Okay." Shuffling feet. The tickle of wool as warmth settles over his body. Denji exhales.
"Come get me if Power wakes up." Aki's voice is quiet but clear over the droning of the TV. "Or if you need anything else."
"Mmn."
Gentle fingers comb hair out of his forehead before slipping away. He grunts.
"Thank you," Aki whispers.
Denji has just enough time to wonder what for before his thoughts are blanketed by the gentle weight of sleep.