Work Text:
The day after Kurosawa killed himself, Adachi wanted to scream.
But he couldn't, no matter how desperate he was to let his grievances exit his mouth in frightening, shrill volumes. Adachi found that he couldn't scream.
At all.
It felt like his vocal cords had been ripped from his throat. Unable to produce any sound other than quiet sobs, as he curled into himself on his desk, refusing to believe that anything was real. That the text he had received from Kurosawa's sister, was real.
"I'm sorry." was the content of the text, as well as every word that came from every other person that encountered him. He couldn't even breathe without someone intercepting him, reminding him of his passing.
No matter how Adachi wanted to react -- to trash, to scream, to cry, to beg them to stop making him remember his husband's death, to give him at least a minute alone -- he found that he couldn't. Lips pressed thinly, jaw clenched, pretending like he took their apology to heart.
Why would he? Their sorry's didn't mean anything. Their sorry's couldn't bring Kurosawa back. So their sorry's were nothing to Adachi. Nothing was anything to Adachi.
The day after Kurosawa killed himself, Adachi went to work.
He had the obligation to.
Kurosawa had said so himself; to carry on, to keep going, to keep working, even when he was gone. It was selfless and stupid of Kurosawa to wish that upon him.
Especially when he had been the pillar that kept everything up. That kept Adachi going, when he didn't want to.
Without Kurosawa, everything was awful.
The office had been shattered to pieces, and nobody knew how to process it.
Kurosawa would have hated to see the workplace in this state, uncoordinated and messy, gloomy and grieving, but all of them knew that Kurosawa would never be there with them again, so they would never know his reactions to their chaos. Nobody knew how to deal with that painful ache.
Rokkaku was silent.
Sitting still on his desk, robotic in assisting others, bland in his way of speaking during sales.
Fujisaki-san was trying her best, attempting to fill the void that Kurosawa left behind. The keyword was trying, because despite her being everywhere, anywhere, all at once, she couldn’t keep up.
At least not like how Kurosawa functioned.
Adachi knew she was stretching herself thin, and he wasn't any help to her despite realizing her state of overwork, and he was no different from Rokkaku.
He didn't do anything productive that day at all.
Preferring to cry and weep, rather than filling in his paperwork, and for once his senpai had left him alone, doing his own work for once, not having it in him to disturb his sadness.
Adachi hated the gesture. It made him even more upset—It gave his mind leeway to wander, to feed into his depression.
After the work day, none of them went home, or at least Adachi, who curled over his desk, unmoving like he was dead.
Praying in his head over and over about wanting to turn back time just so he could hear Kurosawa's comforting voice next to him as he offered him a canned drink.
The day after Kurosawa killed himself, Adachi refused to eat.
He couldn't do it.
Not when Kurosawa had helped him develop a positive relationship with food.
At some point, because of this, he had started to associate food, in its entirety, with Kurosawa.
He couldn't help it -- Kurosawa was a good cook, or, had been a good cook. Adachi had no choice but to only eat the food he made, because he refused to eat anything else.
It had been funny, when Kurosawa was alive. It certainly wasn't funny now, especially for Tsuge and Minato, who had been forced to look after him by Rokkaku, after he noticed Adachi acting strange.
(Strange?
How else did Rokkaku wanted Adachi to act? Did he want him to be happy? To smile? To come to work like nothing happened at all? To pretend like Kurosawa's death hadn't happened, that it was all just mass hysteria?
Adachi wanted that too, but he knew the reality, the cruel jokes that bled into their solitary lives. That it had happened, and there was no turning back, there was no changing what had been done.
So what did Rokkaku want from him?)
"Come on, Adachi-kun." Minato coerced as he hovered the spoon closer to his mouth. "Please eat."
He heard the desperation in his voice, the fear that without Kurosawa that Adachi wouldn't be able to go back to the way he had been.
To that, Adachi wanted to argue with Minato, to burst into a fit of anger, but Adachi had never been an angry person, there wasn't a single bone in his body that could stand being angry.
So he couldn't. So he just continued his silence, sitting against the pillows stained with tears, the blanket placed carefully along his lower body, thanks to Tsuge.
"Please." Minato tried again, and Adachi still refused. Not when he wasn't him.
The day after Kurosawa killed himself, Adachi had already gone weeks without going outside.
He had abandoned his post at his job, and he knew that the company had predicted it.
The only thing left to do was to wait for him to quit, but his job was his last testament for Kurosawa, so Adachi couldn't.
It felt like he had been pushed into a corner.
Like nothing in his life was his anymore, like he wasn't in control.
His life had always been this bleak, but it hadn't been so obvious until now.
All that anger, all that fear, sadness, loneliness, finally caving into him and leaving him gasping as if his head was underwater.
Kurosawa had been his entire life.
Now he was gone, and Adachi was left to pick up the pieces.
It almost hurt, the way that Adachi was ruining his life after Kurosawa worked so hard to fix it for him. All that happiness, all that effort, gone for nothing.
Adachi did nothing but cry all day, and he was sure that the only reason he hadn't received complaints was because everybody in their apartment complex knew about his husband's passing. He'd received their condolences, all piling at the front of his door.
They had started to block him inside, but it wouldn't have made a difference nonetheless even when they weren't.
Adachi himself didn't want to, because their was no point, right? What else was out there for him?
Nothing.
Kurosawa had been his motivation to go outside. Now that he was gone, he didn't have anything.
The only thing for him outside were the arranges of flowers that were beginning to wilt.
The day after Kurosawa killed himself;
Adachi wanted to join him.
There were five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Adachi didn't know which stage he was at with this revelation, but it was close to acceptance.
Kurosawa was dead, so the only reasonable move was for him to be dead too, right?
Without Kurosawa life had no meaning, or purpose. There was no structure, no need to keep himself alive. Adachi had already been slowly killing himself without knowing.
His stomach was eating itself.
His eyes were dry, the tears now replaced with red drops from his own skin instead.
He had cut ties with Minato, Tsuge, Rokkaku, and Fujisaki. All the people left that cared for him, so that there was nobody else to keep him stable.
Because what was the point of being stable?
Of being alive?
Adachi didn't know how he wanted to go. What method he'd want to go out.
Dying in his sleep wasn't an option, and an overdose was impossible because he barely had any medication in his house.
Drowning, jumping, and electrocution were out of the question. Adachi didn't know if he could stand dying that way.
Could he maybe kill himself like Kurosawa had? Hanging on the ceiling, dangling above his floor with just a piece of rope?
Adachi thought that that was almost fitting.
All the guilt in his head tried to talk him out of it. "How would Kurosawa think of you after this? Don't you think he would be ashamed?" But Adachi was already too far gone to listen to any other excuses.
...
The day after Kurosawa killed himself, Adachi died too.