A/N: Quick things about this fic: 1, I headcanon Sigma as non-binary, and use they/them pronouns for them, 2, Sigma/Nikolai is present, though incredibly unhealthy, 3, title comes from Trouble in Paradise by Tele Novella.
Reviews/feedback/etc is appreciated!
Nikolai loves Sigma the way a dog loves its favorite chew toy — and he hates Fyodor the way a popcorn-thrower hates a B-movie.
Sigma's known this from the start.
He showers them in treats, in affection — and Sigma can't bring themself to feel guilty when they find it the least bit disingenuous. The engagement ring on their finger, encrusted in jewels, worth perhaps all the Sky Casino's savings, laughs at them.
They can't hear it, but they know it does.
They know, with Nikolai, another shoe drops, soon — that, as he's always done, it's a joke they can't find the punchline for. A singular cog in whatever complex, catastrophic machine he's planning next.
No wonder he and Fyodor were friends. Two rats on the edge of the world — marveling in their bloody catches. Under the walls of faux-academic, pretentious bullshit, what was it, really, but two killers finding like — two people finding someone delusional enough to not wave a finger when they spouted their misanthropic nonsense?
It's as it's been since the day on the beach — they've grown, but not changed in the least: Nikolai wants Sigma to kill his best friend, one day, and regards it like planning a honeymoon — the weight of his hat still sags down their head, sometimes.
They're a tool. A tool he loves, hugs, fucks, but a tool nonetheless. If humanity was what Sigma wanted, they never could have found it here, but…
…it's as it's been since the day on the beach. Though it grinds their teeth to think about, they have no choice. They're safest here, despite it all.
Sometimes, they feel, in the other's arms, something their young brain can call real love. Sometimes, Nikolai's gaze feels soft — sometimes, his hands curling around them, they think they can sense regret in his demeanor.
Maybe the caged birds don't want freedom, after all.
But…
…it never lasts.
Sigma is no one special to their fiance — they're certain, barring the demon Dostoyevsky himself, no one can be.
And maybe that's the thread Nikolai wants to dangle, for his partner — like a reward for a well-behaved dog. Come take this man's heart to me — show how much you love me, and I'll show you how much I love you. He hurt you, too, didn't he? Let's slice his belly and eat his organs together. Let's laugh, our stomachs full of hate, forever, and make love on his remains.
That's what you want, right?
…but Sigma's not that naïve. No, maybe the first time, they believed him — then the second, when the foreign humanity entered Nikolai's eyes, when he peeled off the mask, let down his hair… and that blood-soaked obsession made them feel like someone, for once, wanted to protect them.
Just as it had been with Dazai — and here, they really wonder how they can be so stupid, how a ring clutches their finger, now.
Dazai hadn't been different, either.
The lot of them — Fyodor, Dazai, Nikolai… all looked at Sigma, something like hunger in their eyes, to take them, mold them, knead them in their fingers, use them and their Ability for the right thing this time: from the Decay of Angels, to Meursault, to the Agency.
The same chessboard, where they were but a pawn, with nothing but a different coat of paint — swapped-out pieces.
(But at that point, could you even call it the same chessboard, if everything about it had been changed? Were they so afraid of loving again that they couldn't see a lifeboat right in front of them?)
Sometimes, they think about looking for Dazai's number — or anyone at the Agency's, for that matter — calling to say they're an old friend of his, and there's a situation they need to be saved from. There's a home they need to find. There's a story they need to hear. There's a ring on their finger that needs to be gone.
It would be easy— a one-way plane trip to Japan. The bleeding-heart weretiger would accept them without question, and they'd live a new life, far from the Decay of Angels. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
…but they'd thought the same about Nikolai — despite everything, once, they'd been endeared by the way he laughed into their mouth when he kissed them, finding him their knight in shining armor. The shared anger, fleeting, knee-jerk, gave them a facsimile of the meaning to their life they craved so badly — maybe, for once, someone understood them. Maybe he was a victim, in the end, just like them — maybe the Decay of Angels hadn't brought all bad to their life, after all…
The spark fizzled out, easily. A clown's act gets old fast.
Still, he'll feign that sensitivity again — they have to call it feigning, to stay sane, because if it's not, what does that make them — take their hands with worry. Spin terrors about what Fyodor would do to them, as a loose end. Fawn over the spot of rare light, kindness, they bring to his life. Cling to it — worship them, even, the chosen angel of a murderer on his way to Hell. Where he wants to sever his ties to Fyodor, sever his last thread of morality — with Sigma, he clings to it, some days. They're beautiful — too beautiful for someone as crude as him, and far, far too beautiful to be dirtied by the hands of someone like his terrible Dos-kun.
They don't feel loved, no matter how often he insists otherwise.
They're nobody's beacon — nobody's angel. Nobody's fiance.
Sometimes they think they should have died on that beach — died with the meager free will of questioning their existence, then splattering against the ground in a spot of poignancy. Better die never answering that question than live long enough to ask it again, and again, until, at a point, the words stop meaning anything. Better die a pitiful martyr than live to be a burden, wondering why you were spared at all.
Sometimes they curl away from Nikolai's touch like a hot iron, shove their face into their pillow, and cry like a real three-year-old — like someone who's never quite learned how to.
They miss the casino.
They miss being called Manager — they miss being respected for their work.
Not loved — not obsessed over — not worshipped — not lusted after — respected.
They find none of that, now.
As tempting as it is to peel the ring off their finger and hurtle it into the ocean, hop whatever train's running and let it take them wherever it pleased, grasp a life for themself with their own two hands…
…they can't. Not for Nikolai — but for themself.
Because who is Sigma, really, if not a pawn?
What are they, if not complacent in their own emptiness?
What do they have, peeling past their kicked-puppy demeanor, and the Ability they're sick of thinking about?
Who would offer them a home?
The Agency?
What would they do in a year, two, ten, then?
Would Dazai get sick of them — just as Fyodor, and all those in Sigma's life before him, had?
Was the person they were, under the ring, even someone worth being?
They hated their own fiance, after all — after he saved their pathetic life not once but twice, scooped them off the filthy, cold floor of that prison, in a pang of the humanity he would chase in their form forever. Amazingly plain, he called them, that day on the beach with the blood dry on their coat — they should have considered it foreshadowing.
Maybe they owed it to him, looking into his eyes, oft-hidden, and seeing a pitiful madness, and God only knew what it would do without Sigma to keep it in line…
…but…
…how long would they spend paying that debt?
What were they even doing with the life that Fyodor, Nikolai, Dazai, all toyed with like nothing? What were their hobbies? What food did they enjoy?
(At a point, it all began to taste the same.)
They miss the casino — their head turned away from their partner, their limbs curled into a ball, only able to run so far in their own home — hardly their own — every time they think it, they feel like they're going to break.
They miss the casino.
At the casino, they were an ordinary man. They worked, they had passions — dangerous, but theirs. They were a person — they had a shape, they had a soul, they had beating, moving parts, they hadn't been opened and hollowed out yet, there were numbers, clients, schedules, to look forward to. Most would even call them talented — intelligent, admirable. They spent their nights thumbing through paperwork, obsessively memorizing every last word — they lost sleep, but there was a joy in it, a purpose, the passion found in an average man smiling upon his life's work…
…now, they slept, cramped, with a warm body by their side — loose from its braid, Nikolai's hair spiraled out beneath him, white locks interweaving with Sigma's own, and he clutched them like a safety blanket. He was stronger than he looked — muscled, underneath the frills of his goofy outfit. Sigma, meanwhile, was thin, wiry, sometimes afraid their partner could snap them in two if he so desired.
They weren't Fyodor — they couldn't give Nikolai the understanding he seemed to crave.
Whatever he wanted from them… they were long past wondering.
But they have a theory that rolls around their head some nights, when they're long past trying to pick Nikolai's brain — trying to play his rock, his unmoving support beam who does little more than fret at his wounds and gape at his antics, and hug him close all the same.
He wants a spectacle — after all, being free as a bird means nothing if no one's there to watch you. What kept Nikolai from detaching himself from reality, shaving down his meager morals, in his own home? If a tree chops itself down, does it even make a sound?
It's a childish want for attention — a flourish, on the same wavelength as the silly little flaps of his cape, the patterns on his hat.
If he wanted to kill Fyodor… call Sigma naïve, but what would be stopping him from making a few calls to Meursault, begging for a death sentence? What, really, would stop him from grabbing the feebler, skinnier, sicklier, man's face, and driving his thumbs into his eye sockets — digging, digging, until he stopped moving?
What did he need his Ability for, anyway? What did he need Sigma for, anyway?
They were his witness.
The one who fell for it, every time, hook, line, and sinker. The one who still had the heart to yell at him, but come crawling back anyway. The one who gave him the attention he craved so.
Go walk into the ocean if you want to die so badly. Go smother Dostoyevsky with a pillow and leave me out of it.
…but, of course, he wouldn't.
It's easier to plan this storybook finale — to imagine dragging Fyodor's insides right out of their cavities, to spin some wild prison escape — than it is to put your money where your mouth is. To take a real risky bet — to level a gun at someone's head and pull the trigger, with no promise of your face even making the news.
When they realized that, the numbers on the calendar lost all meaning. The nebulous, bullshit plans.
Killing Dos-kun. Yeah, right — if you kill him, who do you have left?
You don't care about me.
I'll dress your wounds and coo over you and dance with you and kiss you and gasp at your antics as much as you want me to.
But you don't care about me.
What we have — it's not about me.
It's never been about me.
The wedding day would be soon.
Knowing Nikolai, it would be spectacular — maybe it would be beautiful enough for Sigma to delude themself, for the third time now, that it would be worth staying.
Maybe there would be a big, fancy cake — or maybe they'd call a cheerful fuck-you to societal convention (Nikolai's idea) and have a batch of wedding cookies instead (Sigma's idea).
Maybe they would look nice in their suit. Maybe they'd find themself able to blush at the sight of their handsome groom in a tux — reignite whatever feelings got them into this trainwreck to begin with.
(If any had existed at all.)
Maybe, like Meursault, Dazai would make a surprise appearance, and he'd be as annoying as he'd been that day — but like that day, he'd skillfully pull them away, offer a home again, in that odd, Dazai way he did.
And…
…maybe Sigma could accept it — or maybe, if nothing else, they'd become human for a moment, just enough to slap him across the face and bark an insult.
Maybe there was a better life for them, somewhere, and maybe they'd be able to convince themself they deserved it — more than they deserved being Nikolai's trophy spouse, anyway.
Maybe there would come a time when they could pawn off the ring, and gamble the money away. Catch the neon lights, again, and it wouldn't be the Sky Casino, but nothing ever would — and that was okay, wasn't it? The grief would never lessen, but their life would stretch on, growing around it, until it felt far, far away…
It would be…
…okay?
The arms around them were warm — the sweat, sticky, slick, on the back of their neck, the tickle of Nikolai's breaths rustling against them.
Sometimes, they think they'll look down at their hand, and see their ring finger suffocated — a sickly, blackened, blue, purple.
But no — it's just their hand.
Pale, somewhat bony, moisturized every morning, with manicured fingernails.
As it was in the Sky Casino, and as it was in Meursault.
Nothing's changed on its face — how thin the line is, between agency and the lack thereof.
How one wrong decision — one second of hesitation, one moment of trusting the wrong person — could send someone's life spiraling down, until its inevitable halt.
That demon Fyodor…
…Nikolai…
A shudder overtakes their body — terrified as they are of waking him up.
They stuff a fist halfway up their mouth, tearing the skin of their knuckles on their teeth.
Hot tears well in their eyes.
Don't cry, Sigma.
Don't make a goddamn sound.
He'll make a spectacle out of it.
He'll laugh at you — and why are you the one with the right to cry, anyway?
You're his frilly lap dog. You yap and bite for him alone.
Stop crying — stop crying, goddamn it, you're an adult.
Stop it…
Stop…
…
A shape rustles behind their back.
There's a sleepy groan — but even that has his typical singsong lilt to it.
"…Sig…ma?"
Involuntarily, they wheeze out another half-sob, caging their face in their fingers — squeezing their eyes tight, locking their jaw.
A hand closes on their shoulder.
It jostles them, and they can imagine the pretty glint of Nikolai's eyes in the dark.
Toyingly, there's that smile in his voice. Rarely, if ever, does it leave.
"Aww — what's the matter, hon?" He drawls.
They can't answer.
Even when they keep their mouth shut, they tremble under his touch, and there's another sob.
Their hands grow wet — warm — a bird pitifully pacing a cage it will never truly leave.
(That makes two of them, then.)
The most they can do for themself — the least bit of agency they can scrounge together — is hide their face as Nikolai tugs them closer.
They won't give him a thing. No blubbering sobs to laugh at.
No spectacle.
For once, no goddamn spectacle, as they cry into their fingers, weakly choking out another wordless moan, face growing hot with tears — knuckles scraped, ring gleaming, lost and pitiful as they were the day they were born — to no mother, no midwife, only the elements — the elements, and people who wanted to take them, use them, from then to now, nothing had changed, and they're beginning to feel like nothing ever will…
…
…they miss the casino.
