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Kokichi was a genius. And he made an amazing plan, admittedly, with every detail perfectly thought out, down to the inflictions of his own speech.
Drag him across the floor. Trail his blood across the hangar. Lie on the hangar to stage your own suicide. Switch positions and record his death. Flush his clothes down the toilet. Don't think about anything except ending the killing game. Remember that this is what he wanted. Remember that he needs you to hate him. Remember that he was lying the entire time. Know that you need to trust him.
Of course, Kaito still fucking hates him. But at the same time, it's impossible to keep holding that grudge, lodged and swelling in his throat, knowing damn well how badly Kokichi hates the killing game. Hated. He hated it more than anyone else, so much that he killed himself for it, joining the great majority of their classmates, crushed under his own kingdom of lies.
Kaito lied to everyone too. Maybe not about the same topics with the same severities, but he lied to everyone too. It was just a matter of perception (or, moreso, consensus gentium) and of Kokichi's own death-defying, self-sacrificing stubbornness, that he ended up painting himself out to be pure fucking evil, whereas Kaito ended up as some JAXA-reject 'hero'-wannabe, too stupid and brainless to mean any true harm.
Kokichi always had this stunning foresight and intelligence that everyone else lacked. (Obviously, Kaito was smart too— he didn't get recruited as the Ultimate Astronaut for fucking nothing, alright?, he knows three languages, passed the National Aerospace Exploration entrance exam at sixteen, and survived this long, at the very least.) Kokichi operated on a different level from everyone else, constantly confusing and confounding everyone in the game, including Monokuma and presumably the actual mastermind, getting everyone to hate him as a pretense to privacy, all while piecing together the entire reality of the school and working to cease it for good.
It makes Kaito mad beyond no end, almost irrationally: Kokichi's self-isolation and intense distrust of others. That type of mindset makes Kaito want to put him in his place. To make him believe in others whole-heartedly, just like how Kaito does. Although, he is all-too-aware how Kokichi would never fall for that fallacy. That's why he was so fucking smart. Kokichi knew that, even the few people who he could trust, like Miu or Gonta, would still falter before despair and crack under pressure. That's why, eventually, he had to die.
He can't get the horrifying image of blood seeping out of the press out of his mind. He can't stop replaying the ungodly squelch that his bag of bones made, all compressed under the intense pressure of the hydraulic press. He can't help but imagine the absolute horror Kokichi felt under that press, suffocating, dying, sweaty and desperate, knowing that he was going to die, all lying atop Kaito's own jacket.
Kaito feels his own breaths coming in short and breathes in Kokichi's scent. The overwhelming musk of sweat fills his senses, along with the faint smell of candy, sweet and pure and undeserving of death. He lets the unadulterated thoughts of Kokichi flood his synapses, drowning out any other white noise of the situation.
Fine. He didn't adhere to all of Kokichi's plan. Call it malicious noncompliance. But this wouldn't change anything. No one would find his scarf inside of the Exisal while he was in it, not when everything else is perfectly to Kokichi's script, ensuring the insane unsolvable nature of the case of his death. No one would know that Kaito kept his scarf for himself. Not even Kokichi.
Just one more secret that he's taking to his grave. That's one difference between he and Kokichi— Kokichi couldn't keep it in. He still cracked, like everyone else, and confessed to all of his sins, even if through clouded and convoluted speech and even more unimpressive lies. Kaito, on the other hand, was still married to his undignified egoism and asphyxiating shame. A part of his heart swells with misplaced pride at the prospect of beating him at something, as if they weren't both marching toward death.
Kaito figures he's a terrible person. He knows that. He's not disillusioned enough to really believe he's the Luminary that his sidekicks think him to be. He knows that there's something integrally wrong within his framework, physiologically and metaphysically, which keeps seeping out of every pore and orifice of his body; from the hacking of his lungs, to the ill words he speaks, to the violence he perpetuates, to the fantasies he indulges in his mind.
He tries to convert this panic into humiliating arousal. He tries to forget how irreversibly dead Kokichi is. By his own hands, no less.
He tries to conjure up the frustration that the boy used to ignite in him, all the juvenile taunts of 'stupidity' and 'naïvety' in class trials and across the dining hall, in which Kaito would afterward storm off to his bedroom and angrily jack off to thoughts of finally shutting him up, fucking into his fist as if it were the crux of Kokichi's milky thighs.
He tries to imagine Kokichi's teasing voice, so full of saccharine sickness, asking him if Kaito kept interrupting him because 'he liked him, or something', with that infuriating glint in his eyes as if he knew how dead right he was.
But instead, all Kaito can think about is the desperation and scratchiness of his voice, right before his death, outwardly begging for Kaito to end the killing game and trust him.
Still, he finds his fingers trailing to the front of his pants, gently rubbing the fabric, experimenting with the thought of sex and death. He knows he could keel over at any moment. The burning of his chest keeps him eternally aware.
He shoves his nose deep into the fisted bandana, closing his eyes and creasing his eyebrows so hard that it sends a flurry of stars from his phosphenes, speckling his vision with the grand illusion of deepspace. It smells so good, so intoxicating, so evocative and sexy and deathly and dying, Kaito unconsciously begins to palm himself through his slacks.
He tries not to think too hard. It only gets himself so far. He just takes in Kokichi's essence, soaked in his perspiration, persisting past his expiration. He lives in the memory of his once-warm skin, his once-rosy lips, and his once-frail body. He imagines running his nose over the expanse of his body, peppering kisses all over his face and collarbones and stomach, trailing further and further down until he can take Kokichi into his mouth.
He groans into the scarf, his breath making it warm and humid around his lips. He can't bring himself to care when it smells so good, so uniquely Kokichi, so frustratingly Kokichi, so undoubtedly Kokichi. He absentmindedly curses his name, rebuking 'what he's doing to him,' as if he asked for Kaito for anything at all.
He pulls his lustful nose off of the scarf to undo his belt, but as he does, his eyes latch onto the control panel in front of him. Kokichi explained, briefly, exactly how the Exisal would work in the trial: there are buttons to manipulate Kaito's voice into anyone elses' in the class, ("surely even you can handle that,") and he would have to speak as both of them to trick everyone ("mostly Shuuichi,") into thinking Kaito were dead.
... He shouldn't.
He really, really shouldn't. But the opportunity presents itself so neatly, and even Kaito can't resist his base urges under existentialist despair. He's already disrespected Kokichi's body by killing him, and already violated his privacy by taking his scarf. It wouldn't mean anything since no one would ever know, not even the gamerunners, with the electrohammers taking away their sado-voyeuristic cameras. It would die with Kaito.
Fuck. He scrambles for the controls, pressing the button to hear Kokichi's voice again, telling himself it was to prepare for the courtroom, and leans toward the mic. "Hello?"
Kokichi's vocals reverberates inside the Exisal, mimicking back to him. It's way too loud, for one, so he scrambles to adjust the volume settings, and secondly, it's fucking uncanny how real it sounds, with the exact amount of rasp and nasality of Kokichi's voice. Kaito remembers what he's skimmed over in the script, how Kokichi places emphasis and tenses on certain words, how Kokichi laughs in such a cultivated and intentional way, and speaks again, "Nishishi..."
Adrenaline runs in Kaito's heart, accelerated by the blood pressure threatening to choke him at any second. If Kaito was already willing to take Kokichi's likeness and use it for his sick fantasies, then jerking off wouldn't be any worse. "K-Kaito."
The acknowledgement sends heat straight to his dick. He's sure that his entire face is red, too, but there's no one around to confirm. So, he undoes his slacks and frees his cock from his starry boxers, then allows himself to whine out a tiny "please," imagining it were Kokichi pleading for skin-to-skim contact. He touches himself tantalizingly slow, as he imagines that's how Kokichi would like it.
He swallows his spit, feeling the shame cement itself inside his throat, and brings his scarf back to his nostrils. He inhales deeply, imagining the heavy smell of sweat was a result of a tense, desperate, understimulated boy, writhing in satin bedsheets, craving touch, teasing himself for hours, waiting for Kaito to unravel him. He begs himself, "Kaito, please, I need you..."
To trust me, his mind supplies. He pushes that thought away in favor of stroking his dick faster, with feeling. With his other hand, he alternates between breathing in Kokichi's scarf religiously, and dragging it away, in order to not muffle the sound quality too much. "You like me, don't you? Show me just how."
He knows that Kokichi probably wouldn't ever beg for anything, nonetheless his touch, but he still wants to service Kokichi any way he can: maybe it's part of his hero complex; maybe he's just a stone top pervert; or a pushover power bottom; or some other gay shit he doesn't want to think about— so he just keeps whimpering into the open air, as if with enough desperation, he'll come back and touch him for real. "I need you so bad, Kaito-chan, more than anything or anyone else."
It wouldn't be Kokichi's final lie. Still, Kaito chooses to believe it anyway, as if it weren't his own delusion in the first place. He clenches his jaw hard, choking out groans, hearing the pathetic display over the intercom through Kokichi's sappy tone. He starts thrusting his hips off of the chair, chasing the pleasure right at his wrist, "You're so good. You've been so good this entire time. You're the only one I'm telling any of this, so—" fuck, "—so you have to fulfill our promise and end the killing game—" fuckfuckfuck.
He jerks into his hand rough, just needing to feel relief from his pounding headache, needing to replace all the thoughts of anguish with pure lust in lieu of confronting his imminent death— fuck, shut the fuck up— and his hand feels like heaven. He feels like he'll wake up there anytime now.
He lets his facade slip for a moment, "please, Kokichi," and cums with his name dripping off his tongue. It tastes like metal and honey. It echoes off the Exisals innards with Kaito's breathy, hitchy, depraved tone, so incredibly out-of-character and jarring from Kokichi's voice. He strokes himself through his orgasm, his body wracking with the aftershocks of immediate gratification, still gasping into Kokichi's scarf like a lifeline.
His chest heaves, "Fuck."
His chest heaves, "F-Fuck—" and he coughs violently into the bandana, pink staining the white spaces of the checkerboard, over and over like a mantra of hurt, "fuck."
He digs his nails into his own leg, knuckles white, causing pain to blossom from fifty-three different places instead of fifty-two. Kokichi, he blinks the tears out of his eyes, focusing his vision back into reality, finding streamsof cum all over his sweaty chest. He wipes off the effluence with the scarf, wincing at the memory of Kokichi wearing it just an hour ago. I'm sorry.
It's still rich with his scent, but now ruined and forever tainted with blood and semen. He discards it on the floor, hoping nobody looks too close when he reveals himself from the Exisal. He kicks and jams it into the corner, treating it like a ragdoll cumrag.
He tucks his spent dick back in his pants, hands clammy and disgusting. He stares at the ceiling of the claustrophobic cockpit and pretends he's in a spaceship off to fulfill his hopes and aspirations. He imagines Kokichi snidely remarking how he 'actually did it, against all odds,' and rolls his eyes at how he throws his hands behind his head like the dickhead he is.
He picks up Kokichi's script and starts reading.
