chapter one – i've missed you, darling

Fuyuhiko thinks that despite everything, he's coping quite well.

He gets up every day and goes to work in his office that is close enough to the Pie Hole that he can walk there, he takes on new cases, he asks for help from Hajime.

But things are definitely different. He feels it in chest.

Then again, that might just be the bullet stuck in his heart, so he doesn't really know.

(There's a scar on his chest, you know. Peko traces it sometimes in the middle of the night.

His chest hurts when she does this, but not because of the wound.)

/

Mukuro Ikusaba looks better than she did when she essentially lived in the sewers. Her hair has been washed and it falls straight down to her shoulders. Her face isn't covered in dirt and filth and now you can see the light dashing of freckles that dot her nose and cheeks.

Currently, she's sleeping on Kazuichi's sofa.

"I live in fear, bro," Kazuichi whines during one of his breaks. "I think she's going to kill me!"

Fuyuhiko snorts while Hajime frowns. "Why do you think that, Kaz?"

"She's always glaring at me, man! She looks murderous," Kazuichi says.

"I didn't know that you knew such long words," Fuyuhiko gasps. Hajime grins while Kazuichi makes a face. "Besides, she won't kill you in your home."

Kazuichi looks suspicious. "Why?"

"Because it'd be easier to kill you at work. All that heavy machinery. And she has access to all of it because you gave her a job helping you out." Fuyuhiko pops a slice of apple into his mouth and checks his watch. "Oh, look at that. Your break's over. Back on the clock!" Fuyuhiko smiles cheerily at him.

Kazuichi stares at him with a pale face and stumbles out of The Pie Hole on shaky legs.

Fuyuhiko turns to see Hajime rolling his eyes at him. "If he fires her then that's on you, you know that right?"

He shrugs. "She'll still have a job waitressing here. Besides, Kaz won't fire her because he needs to live with her. He won't want to induce her wrath."

Hajime chuckles and starts wiping down the counter. He glances up at him, almost worriedly. "You don't mind her working here, do you?"

Fuyuhiko shakes his head. "Nah." And he means it to. He knows that Mukuro didn't mean to pull the trigger, that it'd been her hand clenching because of the pain that had spread through her back.

Besides, it was hard to hold a grudge against her. A few days after Hajime had brought her back, she had started her first day working at The Pie Hole. Fuyuhiko had come in to see Peko and she had marched up to him as though he was her mission.

"I'm sorry," she'd half-shouted and Fuyuhiko had only not jumped because of years of controlling his reactions. "I can only apologise for any pain I have caused you. If there is anything I can do to make this right, then I will do it!"

Then she had stood in front of him, gazing at him expectantly but without making any eye contact.

"It's – alright," Fuyuhiko had said eventually. "Don't sweat it." He had seen Peko peering out of her office with her face carefully blank. Fuyuhiko had stared at Mukuro for a moment. Her hands were clenched around a notebook with Just Keep Swimming! printed on the front of it in gold. She'd looked scared, Fuyuhiko had thought. As though everything she'd thought that she could rely on had crumpled around her.

Fuyuhiko knew exactly what that felt like.

"I'm…I'm sorry about your sister. Sorry she didn't have your back," he'd said before he could stop himself. Mukuro had blinked at him with dark eyes before she'd nodded and scurried into the back to talk to Hajime about something.

(Sometimes he wonders if this is what his own sister is like. But then he thinks he's just projecting.)

"Peko doesn't like her," Fuyuhiko says.

Hajime nods. "Yeah, I know. I had to argue with her for days until she let Mukuro work here."

"Yeah, she told me about it," Fuyuhiko says.

"I mean, I get why she doesn't like her. She did technically kill you. It's hard to forgive those who hurt the people you care about." Hajime frowns down at the counter and Fuyuhiko wonders who he's thinking about.

He settles on humming in agreement and they sit in silence for a while.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko doesn't really buy into the whole 'friendship saves the world' trope or even the whole friendship thing anyway. But he thinks that if anyone was his friend then he supposes he'd pick Hajime.

Besides, being able to say that he has a friend that can raise the dead is pretty cool he guesses.

(He had a friend once, when he younger. Back when his mother was alive and his father was someone that he thought he could trust whole-heartedly.

His friend is gone now but sometimes Hajime smiles and Fuyuhiko thinks that he can see him still.

But he's probably just projecting again, so he ignores it.)

/

"We're starting a new club," Chiaki announces one day.

"Another one?" Fuyuhiko groans.

"There's already a club?" Mukuro asks, quietly.

Watson barks softly and Mukuro lifts a slow hand and pets her. Watson looks happy.

All four of them are crammed into a booth an hour before The Pie Hole closes. Fuyuhiko wonders if Mukuro is meant to be working or not but decides that Peko is better suited to reinforcing such things.

"Yes, we have the Solving Murders Club," Chiaki explains. "We have jackets. I'll order you one."

Mukuro blinks at her. "…Thank you…"

"Not a great gift, you don't need to thank her," Fuyuhiko says and gets elbowed in the ribs by Chiaki.

"Anyway, this club is just for us. It's called Dealing With The Fact That We Were Dead But Now Aren't Thanks To Hajime." Fuyuhiko and Mukuro stare at her. "The Club," she adds. Fuyuhiko snorts.

"Are we getting jackets for this club as well?" Mukuro asks. Everything she says, she says quietly Fuyuhiko notices. He's also noticed that most of the time she will say nothing at all. She seems to like Chiaki though and he gets why. Chiaki is too lovely to most people for them to not like her.

"Nope," Chiaki beams. "I was thinking pins."

"Quite a lot to put on a pin," Fuyuhiko points out.

"It's a big pin," Chiaki replies. Watson woofs her approval.

Somehow, Fuyuhiko can hear Hajime sigh from across the room.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko does like Chiaki. He's happy that her and Hajime finally got over themselves and started dating. He's happy he knows her, is something that he'd think if he was feeling particularly cheesy.

She came by with flowers a few days after Hajime had brought him back.

"I got you some lilies because I didn't know what your favourite flower was," she had said.

"I don't have a favourite flower," he'd replied.

"Everyone has a favourite flower," she had said and thrust the lilies into his hands.

("It's daffodils," he'd muttered to her in The Pie Hole a week later.

She had grinned at him and he wondered how one person could feel so much like family even when they weren't.)

/

Peko stares at him sometimes and it worries him. She stares at him as though she isn't sure if he's really there, as though if she looks away then he'll disappear.

One day when Fuyuhiko drops in just before The Pie Hole shuts to drive Peko home and he finds her at her desk with her head in her hands.

"Peko?" he asks and shuts the office door behind him. Hajime is already packing outside and Fuyuhiko knows that he would leave with Nagito soon.

Peko doesn't answer but she does tilt her head up to look at him and he sees that the rims of her eyes are red.

Fuyuhiko blinks, stunned for a moment before he races around her desk and drops to his knees, one hand reaching for her hands, the other cupping her face. "Darling, what's wrong?"

She stares at him blankly and he feels worry freeze his veins. "Darling?" he asks, weakly. He thinks that Peko is the most important woman, no person, in his life and he thinks that she's the only one he's ever opened up to and he thinks that god he might just love her, and he thinks that she's scaring him.

"You were dead for three days," she says, without any emotion, staring at some point above his head and Fuyuhiko flinches. They never really talked about it. They dodged around the topic as much as they could. They had just tried to fit back into their regular lives as much as they could, and Fuyuhiko knew that at one point they would have to talk about it, but he would give anything for it not to be now. "You were dead for three days and I had to put you in the fuckin' tub with icy water and go to work." She looks him in the eyes suddenly and Fuyuhiko feels like he's drowning. "I talked to you. Do you remember it? Told you about my day, how Hajime was doing. He was so desperate to get out of the hospital, to bring you back. But he'd had a bullet in his collarbone, so he had to wait three days before they could release him. So, for three days, I had to act like everything was normal, that you were just sleeping back in my apartment like that time you got the measles, but you weren't, you were so pale, and I was so fucking useless and I – "

Peko chokes on a sob and Fuyuhiko drops his hands to wrap his arms around her waist and slide her out of her chair and onto his lap. She cries into his chest, just above his heart and he shifts them so he's leaning against her desk.

Fuyuhiko wishes that he was Hajime because he always knows what to say to make everything ok. He settles for stroking her hair back and murmuring small promises.

He wonders, not for the first time, if everyone elses' lives would be better if he wasn't such a mess.

With Peko crying in his arms, he thinks that the answer is yes.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko and Peko have been dating for the past two years and he's still not sure how he managed to get so lucky.

He remembers how it had started. One day, Fuyuhiko had dropped by The Pie Hole to get Hajime to help him with a case but only Peko had been there, standing behind the counter and frowning at her laptop. He had thought she looked beautiful.

He had been about to turn and leave when she had spoken. "Do you think that daffodils would look nice in the centre of each of the tables?"

"Why're you asking me?" he had retorted and wanted to punch himself for being so rude.

She hadn't blinked and just kept staring at him with wildly intelligent eyes. "Because I value your opinion," she had replied.

A warmth had blossomed in his chest and before he could stop himself, he had said, "Only in the spring." And then he had walked out as quickly as he thought was socially accepted.

(A week later, he had left a daffodil on her desk and a week after that she had kissed him in a coffee shop.

He still doesn't know what she sees in him but, he just counts his blessings that he's got any time at all with her, even if he doesn't deserve it.)

/

There's a new case. Fuyuhiko reads over the file that a client had given him in his office as he makes his way over to The Pie Hole.

There isn't a lot. A woman stabbed fifteen times around the back of an abandoned bowling alley. The victim was aged twenty-four. Body was discovered by her friend who had gone looking for her.

Fuyuhiko walks into The Pie Hole and sees Hajime in the back, pushing a pie tin into the oven. Nagito and Mukuro are skating and walking respectively to serve customers. Kazuichi and Chiaki sit in front of the counter, Watson with her head resting on Chiaki's knees, Peko stood in front of them, smiling wryly at Kazuichi.

Everything feels the way it's supposed to. Of course, he can still remember the press of Peko's head against his chest as she had cried, the warmth of Kazuichi's body as he gave him a tight hug when he first came to The Pie Hole after everything, the lilies that were in a vase on Peko's windowsill.

But still, this feels familiar. This feels like home.

/

Here's the thing: nothing ever goes the way you mean it to. And Fuyuhiko should have learned this years ago.

/

author's note: ooooooooooooooo boy. the sequel is here. and it is SAD. idk if this is actually sadder than the first one but nevertheless angst is A Thing.

i dont think that this will have as much feel good moments as the last though i will try my best but its just. fuyuhiko is a very cynical narrator when compared to hajime who i tried to write more hopeful? idk but i do hope u like this!
my tumblr is bravemccalll if u wanna tell me ur thoughts or just threaten to kill me for making our boy suffer. either is fine.
until next time! - nic