Katsuko-sensei calls him in before the hour is up. He’d been leaning into Kio’s shoulder and the welcoming fabric of his baggy coat, drowsy with stress and worry. Only when Soubi’s friend gently nudged him did he startle from his half-dreams and turn, squinting up into the bright fluorescent lights lining the hallway just over Kio’s shoulder. Katsuko-sensei clutches a clipboard Ritsuka has seen hundreds of times, but her eyes are as cautiously gentle.

The expression is familiar—the careful and measured affection she’d employed when a young, frail Ritsuka first came to her office, hiding his lack of identity behind his rich black hair and big, expressive ears. The implications of how that reflects Soubi’s butterfly-fragile heart both confuse and encourage him. He sits up abruptly and absently clenches Kio’s arm.

“Ritsuka-kun?” she asks, pressing the board to her chest.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to come in?”

Ritsuka’s only answer is his anxious struggle to his feet—leaden and numb after such an agonizing wait—and the near sprint he makes to her. His breath runs thin across his lips as he attempts to level his tilting vision, which makes the walls and floors seem to shift like water around and beneath him. The intense nausea of love drives him to follow her as she takes his hand, realizing how unstable he seemed to be on his legs this night. He swallows around a lump in his throat.

Not until he sees Soubi’s long limbs sitting uncomfortably on the small couch does he stop imagining him instead lying on the floor, bleeding from wounds that have finally jumped from emotional to physical and killed him. He worries that pulling them to the surface will break whatever protective casings that have grown around them and their poison will leak irrevocably. He worries that Soubi will buy cigarettes tonight and smoke them alone. He worries he’ll burn himself again with them, trying to chase all the weakness from his body with a challenge of pain. Katusko’s hand squeezes his, and then she sits down in the chair at her desk.

Soubi sits on the couch, on his nose, lips, and the thin rims of his glasses visible past the gold wheat of his hair. His knees were bent, feet flat on the floor, elbows on his knees, neck extended, and lips pressed thinly together. Every muscle available to the eye tense and made ready. Ritsuka would not be surprised if his tongue were moving behind his teeth as well, licking nervously and forming syllables to spells. He is ready for attack, and to be attacked. And in a way, he is under attack.

Ritsuka’s heart cracks again.

No, his mind immediately interrupts, quick to combat the dangerous sensation of pity and fear. He’s long indulged Soubi’s dangerous imbalances because of those two emotions, like ignoring a cavity until it had rotten the tooth away.

No, it’s not an attack. It’schange—Soubi is afraid of changing. And so was I. That’s all it is.

He takes a seat next to his fighter on the couch, not taking his eyes off him. For a moment, Soubi refuses to look him the eye. Instead, he seems intent on burning a hole in the carpet with the words of power barely contained in his mouth.None of this can be easy for him, Ritsuka thinks. So, when he bows his head for a moment, he understands why he doesn’t turn to look at him and instead turns his gaze to his patient counselor.

She begins talking to both of them about her general concerns, but they are soft words. Words designed only as harshly truthful as the patient can handle. Ritsuka is less afraid, has been braced by years of this painful healing process, but Soubi is paralyzed by it. The words are thus partly truthful and frightening, but partly sugarcoated.

She tells him that Soubi has been exceptionally truthful for his first session, and she sees potential for a lot of progress. Ritsuka’s heart swells, but his mind paces around the idea with more caution.

She talks about issues of betrayal and insecurity without telling any stories. Ritsuka knows that the details are privileged—private—and he’ll only know them when Soubi is ready to hear them spoken out loud again. God knows when that time will come, but Ritsuka wills himself a patience no child his age should yet need. For now, he’ll know vaguely what lines not to cross, he’ll see the wounds in Soubi’s heart like a white object in a dark room—whole, but murky and under-defined.

It’s not until Ritsuka begins asking Katsuko-sensei if Soubi will be able to make something close to recovery that he feels his hand slip into his and pull tight. Ritsuka glances over to him and he’s turned his head closer to him, though his eyes remain locked safely with the floor.

Ritsuka rubs the pad of his thumb over the mountains and valleys of Soubi’s knuckles, welling with a relief he’s unable to hold back entirely.

There are no cigarettes tonight.

Kio lingers in the kitchen and the living room—where there are no canvases being worked on, no paint trays scattered about, splashes of color—like a benevolent ghost for as long as he can. He follows them home just to offer support for as long as he can. The dirty dishes call him first, and then the empty shelves draw him to the nearby convenience store. He returns with green plastic bags weighed down with boxed nabe ingredients and a favorite brand of beer, a silent expression that Kio has just as little idea of how to handle the situation as any of them, despite the long-suffering grin plastered on his face, shining as bright as any of his piercings.

Ritsuka is glad for him tonight—the color of his eyes and the greenish tint to his bleached hair are a welcome island in a life that is all about the misty blue of Soubi’s eyes and thoughts. His voice is a loud, uneven lullaby to his worries for a moment. Not even Soubi, who still avoids the awkward eye contact with his Sacrifice at the moment, can resist a faint hint of amusement in his presence.

Kio’s light and singing voice—authentic tonight or not—draws Ritsuka in with stories from college about he and Soubi. The fighter slips off politely to shower and leaves Kio and Ritsuka seated at the table. Unable to resist another moment, Kio nudges an open can of alcohol towards Ritsuka with a mischievous grin.

Ritsuka just tilts his head at him and smiles tiredly. “Kio…”

“You know, Ritsuka, if you’re not more mature than anyone I know who can drink, I’ll—I’ll pierce my tongue,” he says, nudging it again, more forcefully. “Go on, just see if you like it. You need to unwind a little, too!”

“Isn’t your tongue already pierced?” he asks, nodding towards the glistening silver along his ears.

The artist grins around his own drink, denying and confirming with the same expression. Ritsuka sighs, and cautiously mimics the motion, stopping to smell the liquid beforehand. He flattens his ears and coughs, pulling it away. Kio laughs.

In the course of the night, given all the more weight by the incident before, Kio ends up drinking himself into a friendly puddle, seeing how Soubi would let his share go to waste, only politely waving it away. And Ritsuka, after a few bitter sips of experimentation, only grimaces at the offer, ears twitching. Ritsuka gathers up a few pillows and trails behind as Soubi guides him into his room.

He collapses bonelessly into Soubi’s bed before any special preparations can be made and unapologetically smells the sheets for his friend’s scent. Ritsuka sees the telltale signs of laughter that show only in his posture, the motions of his hands, the flexing of his fingers. The fighter then turns and heads silently to Ritsuka’s room, to the bed which has seen less and less traffic as Ritsuka became more and more attached to Soubi’s.

He attempts to lift Kio’s heavy head to nudge a pillow beneath it, but ends up settling for pressing it into his arms. The artist mumbles happily, wraps around it, and promptly falls off into sleep.

Ritsuka pats him on the arm as he turns to leave the room, grateful all he’s done with just a bag of late night groceries.

When he walks into his own room, it feels slightly foreign. Daylight paints it more familiar, casting light over the color of his books and the paintings he hung the walls, but night usually whisked him over to Soubi’s and the image is unfamiliar for a moment in the dark. Soubi is already stripped down to his loose pajama pants, hair half pulled back and glasses hanging loosely from a few fingers. Ritsuka wonders if he knows how he’s mimicking that stance in Katsuko’s office.

He stands at the doorway for a moment, just observing. Soubi just stares with dedication at the carpet washed in faint moonlight and brighter city light, so he walks over to his dresser tucked in the closet. He shrugs himself out of his long sleeve shirt and toes off his socks. Soubi remains quiet through it all, and doesn’t say a single thing even when Ritsuka comes to stand right in front of him, his bare toes intruding on his view of the carpet.

“Soubi,” Ritsuka says, hoping to draw his gaze up. He toys nervously with his fingers, and Soubi seems to shy away from it.

Then, he swallows around that same lump—a lump that reminds him with a little laugh that’s unsure its ironic or just amusing—and tells him, “I love you.”

He doesn’t do it to entrance him into a bond, or to win fights, but because he simply wants Soubi to look at him and let him know he can still do something good for him.

Soubi’s head lifts, and Ritsuka smiles in relief.

And for the first time, Soubi doesn’t repeat it as Seimei once ordered him—he decides to pull Ritsuka down at his side and tell him about his past. Only one story for the night though, because--as concerned as he is—Ritsuka yawns as he leans against his shoulder. It’s too cute for Soubi to resist.