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dj-of-the-coven · 2 years

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Lost My Fear of Falling

The other day, @purplelea14 sent me a cool fic they wrote and it made me so happy that I went insane and stayed up a whole night to write something in return. Here are ~2,800 words of my finest BeatNeku fluff, fueled by pure, concentrated gay yearning. Whatever the yearning equivalent of essential oil is, this is it. Don’t drink essential oils if you don’t want to die and likewise don’t read this fic if you can’t handle yearning so unbelievably, insufferably drawn out for a one-shot that it’d make a tiktok junkie have a heart attack. Fic under the cut.

Neku was never meant to see this much of him.

He hadn’t thought that letting Neku in would mean splitting himself in half---that falling for somebody was just as much about being caught as it was feeling the plummet. Under the magnifying glass of Neku’s eyes, his heart cracked open like a geode, raw, jagged, and red, and with every cut he’d received from trying to claw it shut, Neku had just taken his arms and wiped away the blood, murmuring soft reassurances in his ears the whole time.

“Nothing you do could ever make you a burden to us,” Neku told him, nuzzling his face so gently into Beat’s neck, and the words themselves felt taboo; he was almost loathe to hear them for how much they made his chest tight with things too shameful to put a name to. “Not to Rhyme, not to the Twisters, and not to me.”

The fall was what was supposed to be scary, he thought. He was supposed to be afraid of the height ahead of him that was threatening to break his bones, but he found he couldn’t care less about his body’s survival, in the end. All he could think about was how he was bare for the first time in his life, even when he was standing at the edge of a cliff.

He tipped over the edge in slow motion.

It wasn’t falling that scared him.

Beat fell through movie dates and late night conversations, through in-jokes and shared playlists and hot bowls of ramen on cold, rainy nights. Neku was a beautiful person to fall for, he couldn’t help but think---his hair was smooth as water to card through, and his skin was soft as silk to the touch. Neku’s blue, blue eyes were like jewels, but more precious, and his heart was something so unbelievably warm and delicate to hold.

Being gifted it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to come to terms with. Beat didn’t trust himself not to break it in his clumsy fingers, but Neku believed in him like a tree believed in rain: the fact of the matter was that he couldn’t have gotten this far if Beat didn’t already do what he was needed for. Or so Neku told him while they were lying together under thick winter blankets, moving slowly closer to each other, reaching across oceans of fabric and fluffy pajamas to feel the heat of the other’s skin on the palm of their hands. When Beat slid his fingers under Neku’s shirt, inching up his spine with just the pads trailing over each vertebra, on a whim he pressed his hand flat against Neku’s back. And that was the first time he felt the rhythm of his soul, his heart, beating against him.

It just... made him break.

The first tears fell from his eyes before he could stop them, and Neku made a concerned sound, a small, meek thing, that had them falling even faster. Neku panicked, but Beat just pulled him in, shoving his face in the heat-soaked fleece of his sleeping shirt as he let the tears come, wave after wave, trembling against him until he had nothing left to give.

Neku whispered to him through all of it.

“Beat, you’re not going to break me,” he insisted, holding him through the sobs with a steady hand. “I don’t know who made you so scared that you would. But I’m telling you; I’m not afraid. You’ve never been anything but gentle.”

And truthfully, he wasn’t just scared of hurting Neku; He was terrified by the prospect, practically heart-stricken with a sick, roiling nausea if he even thought about it. But Neku’s words of comfort were powerful, and he had a hard time giving into the dark thoughts with a light so brilliant embracing him from every side.

He still didn’t understand why Neku was letting him have access to the parts of him that were breakable in the first place---why he was allowed to weave his arms around his thin, fragile body and touch him so indulgently, so reverently that it had them both quivering by the mark of a few minutes. There was even a time that he’d had Neku panting against his neck, when Beat had been overwhelmed by the soft kisses that they’d been exchanging in the lamplight, and he’d had to rest himself against Neku in a bid not to swoon, all boneless and happy and utterly, completely in love. Nobody ever told him that love would make him so hungry, that even when he was shivering and oversensitive that all he would want was to put his lips back on Neku’s and hear him whimper Beat’s name, again and again and again.

He didn’t understand why he was allowed it, but losing it now that he had it would be devastating. Beat didn’t think he could have the memory of Neku’s kiss and not be able to repeat it at the nearest possible convenience, whether that be in an alleyway or a phone booth or against the graffiti-lined walls of Udagawa. Restraint just wasn’t something Beat had much of to spare, and he imagined the fallout would tear him apart, being so close to something he wanted that he was never allowed to have again. He’d drive himself insane with the sheer desire to make Neku’s heart beat faster under his palm.

So, if vulnerability was painful and love was terrifying, you’d think that falling in love was the scariest thing someone could come up with---you had to be vulnerable in order to fall, and falling inevitably meant landing somewhere. It was impossible not to encounter pain during the process.

But, from what Beat could tell, the pain was less like broken knuckles and battered shins, and more like a bearable, dull throb in the back of his head that was only felt when something happened to remind him of the injury. The pain of love was knowing that he could never take away everything that would hurt Neku; that no matter what he did, the lingering touch of Shinjuku would always have its cold, dead fingers in Neku’s relationships with others. Beat couldn’t stop him from ever having nightmares again, but he could hold him through them, and that, Neku always said, was more than enough.

Love was painful because it was so fundamentally vulnerable to bear his whole being to someone else, and to be expected to handle that responsibility in return. Except, the vulnerability came with something Beat never could’ve imagined before he’d stripped himself of all pretenses: it came with the possibility of someone taking the softest parts of him and immersing them in bliss, in comfy sweaters and cups of green tea while they watched a movie, in the sweetest, shiest kisses to ask that he be safe on his morning skate around the block. And it was the easiest thing in the world to look at Neku’s insecurities---his low weight, his utter lack of muscle definition, his gap of knowledge in three whole years of world events---and love him for them all the more.

There was something that felt profound in Beat making Neku blush by putting his hands all the way around his waist. If he were more like his sister, he’d come up with an adage by someone properly academic about rose-tinted glasses, but because he was Beat and not Rhyme, the only thing he could think to say was that there was nothing Neku could be that Beat wouldn’t find endearing in some way. He was skinny as hell, and not a damn thing in the world could stop Beat’s heart from rabbiting in his chest when he saw him. Neku was a skeleton of a man and Beat was a very lovesick werewolf.

When you come to have a relationship like that with somebody, Beat thought it was pretty inevitable to sync, even outside of the UG. And the thing that pushed them over the edge---all it took to trigger the thing he’d been so afraid of---was for them to be on a walk together late at night, when it was raining hard enough to rattle the overhangs of every shop they passed.

They’d been under the same umbrella, just observing the sights, when Neku, shivering up a storm, suddenly suggested that they stop inside the Hachiko Plaza phone booth just for long enough that he could warm up a little. Beat, worried that Neku might be on the track to catching a cold, had ushered him inside and quickly taken Neku into his arms, wrapping his hoodie around his sides so they could share Beat’s body heat.

Neku’s arms snaked around him underneath the jacket, holding him gently, softly, like it was Beat who was the one with practically hollow bones that were in danger of being snapped by an overzealous hug. Still, it had his heart thumping, and pressed so close to Neku, Beat could feel his doing the same.

“Mm. You’re warm,” Neku murmured against him, sighing into his chest and snuggling a little closer. “This is so nice that I could just kiss you right now.”

Fighting the urge to beg, Beat coughed out a stiff “Can I, yo?”

Neku just laughed, and then their lips were meeting, Beat’s heart erupting into an erratic pulse despite the slow, soothing care with which Neku gently sucked Beat’s lower lip into his mouth.

And suddenly their hearts were in perfect tune.

He tried to draw away, but it was too late---the sync activated, soaking the both of them in a golden pulse of light, and Beat could feel Neku’s emotions slot perfectly alongside his own, their bodies almost merging together entirely for one split second before spitting them back out again.

It was one of the singular most intense moments of his existence. For a second, he could feel Neku feeling him, their minds looping together in an infinite feedback of I love him, I love him, I love him.

There. That was the thing Beat had been so scared to experience, the joining of their hearts together, where Neku would be able to see every last bit of him that he hadn’t yet laid out for him to look at. Where he could be disgusted by Beat’s complete lack of a functioning brain or any higher thought mechanisms, look at the ugly pieces of Beat that harbored jealousy for Rhyme and his hopeless, chaotic despair over what he’d done to her over the course of his life, letting her die without being smart enough to fix it, and watching it happen again.

Neku must’ve seen all of it, the way he’d seen what Neku considered to be his own worst moments flashing through his mind with the same lightning speed he’d gone through everything else in his partner’s head: Neku almost killing Shiki, Neku refusing to be friendly with Beat and Rhyme when they’d first met, Neku going through endless running cycles of hating Joshua and tolerating him and being scared shitless by the thought of him being his murderer. The moments just kept piling up, showing every time Neku hadn’t reached out to Beat when he was a reaper, every time he made a move that put Shiki’s life in danger, every moment standing alone in a dead city that he regretted not telling his friends how much they meant to him.

He came to the sickening realization that Neku hated himself the same way that Beat hated himself.

But when Beat looked at it all, he couldn’t see any of those as things that made him a bad person---when he’d made most of those mistakes, he was just a kid. Beat couldn’t look at fifteen-year-old Neku with the same lens he would look at the calm, soft-spoken adult Neku he was holding in his arms, because making any kind of comparison between the two would be disingenuous. Everybody went through a learning curve in their teen years, even if Neku’s was more volatile than most. And besides all that, Neku was so much more than a few dumb things he’d done as a teenager. Neku was... he was the best thing to ever happen to Beat.

He hoped that Neku knew that, if his whole tripping-over-himself-in-love thing hadn’t quite been made clear yet.

Luckily, there was still an abundance of good things that Neku had poured into Beat’s mind as well. There were hangouts with the Twisters and coffee shop visits with Shiki, visions of gorgeous city skylines and the best curry in the world at a little shop in Dogenzaka.

Just before Beat’s stomach was about to drop in horror, not seeing anything of himself in there, he suddenly flushed scarlet when his head was inundated with just about everything they’d ever done together after making it to the RG: growing close over the course of months, sleeping over at each other’s places, Beat inviting Neku to stay with him, eventually moving into the same room when they became a couple. There was day after day after day of them waking up together and falling asleep together, holding hands out on the town, showing each other stupid things on their phones, and of course, a billion stolen kisses that he was surprised Neku could remember the context of.

It was a lot.

But it looked like Neku was having it a lot worse.

When Beat looked down to meet his eyes, Neku was shaking, blinking like he was trying desperately not to cry.

“How long?” Neku said, and Beat could only tighten his fists.

“I always been stupid, yo. It ain’t dat new.”

Appalled, Neku shook his head, a small, frustrated growl coming from the back of his throat. “No, Beat. How long have you thought---thought that I would hate you, if this happened?”

That had to be a rhetorical question. Neku knew from syncing that Beat had been afraid of this possibility since they got together, knowing it was only a matter of time before his feelings grew too large to keep contained in his body, or even in this plane of reality.

Before Beat could say anything, a fist without any force behind it came down on Beat’s chest. “Beat, you stupid asshole,” he mumbled. “I love you. You know that means I understand you aren’t perfect, right?”

“I... I know I ain’t all I crack myself up ta be.”

“That’s not what that means. Beat, it means I know you make mistakes sometimes.”

Neku brought up a hand and started counting off with his fingers.

“You’re stubborn, you’re hotheaded, you’re clumsy, most complicated vocabulary goes right over your head, and you have such abysmal self esteem it makes me want to put you in a glass jar and shake you around until you’re dizzy.”

Beat blinked.

“This supposed to make me feel better, yo?”

“Shut up. What I’m trying to say is that I know all of that---but Beat, I’m still in love with you. Desperately,” he said, and he pretend-hit Beat again, this time even weaker. “It’s not fair for you to love me so,” he swallowed, “so much and not let me love you back. You’re such a dick.”

And that was when it occurred to him. Really, the answer had been so simple this whole time.

Beat realized that there was no starting point or ending point to falling in love. He’d already been some measure of gone for Neku before he’d ever shown the cracks in his armor, and if he was already in love, then really, he had no point at which he could distinguish a stop in the fall.

He was still falling, all the time, every day, every kiss, deeper and deeper with no end in sight. It was terrifying and exhilarating and wonderful all at once---and it was worth it. Because it was Neku he was falling with, holding his hand in the sky as they tumbled past clouds and never-ending skyscrapers.

“Ya love me,” Beat sighed, a dreamy smile finding its way to his face. “Neku. He loves me.”

“Of course I do,” he grumbled.

“An’ I love you too,” Beat whispered, like a promise, grabbing Neku’s hand and bringing it to his lips to give his palm a soft, lingering kiss.

The blush that spread across his partner’s face was the kind of thing they wrote poetry about. He was so beautiful, his red hair still shimmering with rainy mist, one arm buried in Beat’s jacket because he was cold and his first instinct when that happened was to come to Beat for warmth.

“...Even though you stole my last clean shirt dis mornin’,” Beat joked, and Neku made a show of rolling his eyes before leaning in to kiss him properly.

#dj's fics #beatneku #daisukenojo bito #neku sakuraba #one-shot #don't be fooled by the shortness of the story I literally sat down and wrote this from 10 pm to 6 am #just in case any of y'all were feeling bad about being slow writers #you're nothing compared to me #twewy #ntwewy

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