Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Tell me, why exactly are we both here?”

Aoi had long since kicked his feet up over the steering wheel to rest his heels on the dashboard. He sank lower in his seat every time Light broke the silence with another question.

“You mean, why’re we parked in a seedy back alley like we’re waitin’ for a drug delivery?”

“I wasn’t fully aware that those were our circumstances,” said Light, folding his arms, “but now I suppose I would like an explanation for that, as well.”

In the younger hours of the night, lights from apartment windows above cast a glow into their parked getaway car. As they waited, Aoi scrawled notes in the margins of the Wall Street Journal, circling company initials in tiny print whose trends looked promising after a slight bout of turmoil in the market. He was past the point of relying on premonition to predict the fortune of stocks. The foresight on Cradle Pharmaceutical had given Crash Keys the start that they needed. Now, Aoi Kurashiki was just that good.

Too much of the neighborhood had gone to sleep for Aoi to read by the ambient light. He had since found nothing to do but acknowledge the existence of his lone partner. Darkness did not prevent Light from gliding his fingers over the raised print of his book. Nonetheless, once he heard Aoi drop his pen into the cupholder and fold the paper in defeat, the onslaught of stiff and stilted conversation began.

“We’re here ’cuz you can receive from Clover and I can receive from Akane,” said Aoi. “You know that.”

“You’ve been a receiver for Junpei before, as well, haven’t you?” said Light.

“Not really. Through a relay.” Aoi folded his arms tighter. “Junpei to Akane, Akane to me.”

“Akane is quite talented at accessing the morphic fieldset, isn’t she,” Light mused. “Were she to try, she might be able to communicate with Clover, as well, wouldn’t you say?”

Aoi shrugged. “Probably.”

“So, would you agree that my presence here is essentially pointless?”

He almost choked on his own spit. “It’s—it’s gotta be,” he coughed. “Akane wouldn’t—she told us to both… she wouldn’t…”

Light lifted a hand to his mouth and let out a gentle laugh. He slid a ribbon bookmark between pages of braille.

“You place a great deal of faith in your sister, don’t you,” he said. “As do many of us, but… it’s, in a way, comforting to know even you trust her so completely.”

Aoi frowned. “Why wouldn’t I trust her? She’s my sister.”

Light touched his lips with a thoughtful finger. “Perhaps I just don’t expect you to trust anyone at all.”

Their first meeting had been a nine-hour encounter in 2018, as mere boys, when all of Aoi’s self-reliance and anxiety drove him to lash out at the other participants of the first Nonary Game. He had been no better during their second meeting—their second Nonary Game—acting almost purposely unlikeable to avoid getting close to those who had a chance of identifying him. He and Light had barely spoken to each other since, even after SOIS and Crash Keys combined their efforts towards finding the terrorist capable of wiping out the human race. In Light’s experience, Aoi was a selfish, self-serving, wholly unpleasant young man. Aoi had no evidence to offer to the contrary.

“You and your sister don’t look much alike, either, is that correct?” Light asked. “As it is with me and Clover. No one was able to connect you two during the second game until the very end, and had you not had opposite bracelet numbers in the first game, I don’t think the pieces would have ever fallen into place.”

Aoi remembered the moment Light had figured the two of them out. Once it became apparent that none of the other children had any relation to one another, he told Akane to keep their identities a secret. Unfortunately, under Light’s leadership, the first pair of numbered doors threatened to separate them.

The simplest way to assemble the correct digital root with multiple bracelets is to use the bracelet number that matches the door, then add to it bracelets that have a digital root of nine together, Light had said. For instance, if the door is five, we could send through the person with bracelet five, plus one and eight, and plus two and seven.

Of course, five had been Akane’s number that day. The other door at that juncture was door four, and four was Aoi’s bracelet number. That day had made him hate the number four.

Out of fear of being separated from her brother, Akane had insisted that she go through door four instead. Her excuse was that her brother in Building Q was going through the same door. She wrapped everyone in different layers of her lie; even Aoi did not yet know that there was someone she wanted to follow through door four across the morphogenetic field. After that outburst, Light worked out a combination to include himself among the players passing through door four.

What Aoi did not know, what he found out after they had passed through the doors, was how much Light was depending on his Building Q sibling to make it through the Gigantic. He had kept his hair in his eyes and moved with such confidence that Aoi could never have expected what Light said to him next. His right hand brushed blindly against Aoi’s back, then grabbed hold of his jacket. Show me where the DEAD is, he had uttered. I am blind.

Aoi remembered the way his heart had twisted at this revelation. As terrible as the whole situation was, Light made him realize just how easy he had it. At the end of the hallway, his stomach dropped when he grabbed Light’s left hand to place it on the scanner panel. It was shiny, hard, and near weightless, like plastic. Oblivious to Aoi’s wide-eyed, hollow stare, Light smiled weakly when the beeping on their bracelets came to a stop.

I’m afraid my ability to assist will be hindered from now on, he quietly sighed. My sister has gone through door five, so I no longer have any information about my surroundings. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.

For that first part of the Nonary Game, Aoi felt like the protector of two children aboard the ship. Despite his disabilities, Light navigated the puzzles with ease, needing no further assistance from Aoi or anyone else. Perhaps the fact that he needed no help was what made Aoi worry about Light even more.

Eventually, Light saw fit to tell the rest of the children his secret. As the bonds of trust and teamwork became stronger between the children, the Kurashikis, too, let their secret come to light. Ironically, a handful of the kids did not believe them when they finally told the truth.

Aoi shrugged. “We look plenty alike. Our faces, anyway,” he mumbled. “Problem is she’s brunette, and my hair’s white.”

“White? Is that so?” A smile spread onto Light’s face that Aoi hated as soon as he saw it. “Is it natural?”

“The hell do you care?” snapped Aoi, turning to face his window. “You can’t see it.”

Light had a different kind of touch than anyone else Aoi had the displeasure of knowing so intimately. His fingers felt solid against the back of Aoi’s head, pressed with intent, because touch was a rich source of information to Light. In the presence of only a blind man, Aoi got chills on the back of his neck like he was being closely examined.

“I thought as much. Feels like Clover’s hair,” murmured Light. “Chemically treated.”

Aoi craned his neck away in a wild swerve, his arms flailing out to his sides. “The fuck is wrong with you?!” he yelled. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

“I apologize, but it is my only way of seeing things,” Light said unapologetically.

“Whatever,” Aoi grumbled. He hugged his leg to his chest, his knee blocking his neck, as if feeling the need to cover his vitals. “Just fuckin’… warn me next time or something, shitbag.”

“Of course. Gladly.”

In the stillness, Aoi felt his heart pounding. He hated how long it took to slow, how it made every glance at Light’s calm, regal face nerve-wracking, how it reminded him of his heartbeat ten years ago when a boy named Light trusted him, relied on him as a co-leader of the children of the Gigantic. This was what he hated so much about being around Light Field. Akane knew it, and Aoi had the sneaking suspicion that there was, in fact, no tactical reason for Light’s presence.

His eyes fell to Light’s jacket for approximately the seventh time that night. It was cut in the style of a bomber jacket, though made of cotton, with useless zippers cutting clean lines along his slim frame. The suggestion of his underlying figure threatened to remind Aoi of the unforgettable spectacle of Light’s slender body stripped to his boxer-briefs. Even if Aoi had developed any feelings during the first Nonary Game, he thought he was far beyond them by the time the second one began. That thought fell away when, by the candlelight of the chapel in Building Q, he saw Light’s porcelain skin making ethereal pools of shadow in the hollows between his bones. He was so pale, he nearly glowed. Aoi remembered wondering what it would feel like to run his finger down from Light’s deep collarbone to the soft outline of his pectoral muscle, whether his fingertip would sink into the iridescent flesh like it was clay.

He shook his head vigorously of the image and back to the jacket he was actually seeing. Though the dim lighting had washed out the jacket’s color, he remembered it was a navy blue.

Before he could stop himself, he was speaking. “What’s with you and colors, anyway?” he muttered. “Every time I see you, you’re wearin’ blue. The hell is that? Can you even have a favorite color?”

“I remember what colors look like. Didn’t you know I lost my eyesight in an accident?”

In the back of his head, Aoi did know this. It was hard to think of Light as having ever been able to see, and harder still to imagine his grief at the loss of this part of his world.

“Is there a reason you’re curious about my favorite color?” Light asked, wearing a saucy smile that Aoi hated more than he could put into words. “I speak more than enough Japanese to know that aoi is the word for blue.”

Aoi resisted the urge to throw a punch by thrusting his elbow into Light’s arm instead. “Fuck you! My name’s not even written like that! It’s—it’s a different spelling!”

Light held up open hands in defeat. “You’ll have to forgive my mistake,” he said. “I’ve obviously never seen it written.”

Aoi clamped his jaw shut and curled himself into an even tighter space. Light had always been calm, self-assured, and even smug, but only as an adult was he also shamelessly flirtatious with everyone he met, whether man or woman, single or married, or anywhere in-between. It was all fun and games to Light, just a way to make conversation more jovial. It never meant anything.

“My favorite color is blue, however.”

Aoi still fell for it every time.

“Fuck you,” he muttered.

“It’s the honest truth.”

“I don’t care.”

“Fair enough.”

As he waited again for his heartbeat to calm, Aoi stared at the far corner of a brick building deeper within the alleyway. The dashboard clock was some small number of minutes fast, but by its current time, Akane was scheduled to complete her mission soon. She, Clover, and Alice would round that corner at a casual pace while Aoi kicked on the engine. As the girls piled into the back of the car, he would throw it in reverse and speed out of town before the enemy realized they were missing.

“Seeing as it’s almost over, would you finally enlighten me as to the purpose of this mission?” asked Light.

Aoi gave one dark laugh. “It’s funny how you think I’ll know anything more than you do, just ’cuz Akane’s my sister.”

“My, you sound bitter. Would you like to talk about it?”

“Shut it.”

“What has she transmitted to you so far? You must have some idea from that.”

Aoi closed his eyes and let the silence fill his ears with static. He fell into his head, waiting with open arms for anything, any message or information from his sister. As with the past three hours, he felt nothing.

“Haven’t gotten anything all night,” he muttered.

“Really? Nothing at all?” Light’s eyes fluttered open just a few millimeters, just enough that he would not notice it himself, while Aoi could see the cloudy green of his lower iris glinting in what little light they had left. “Clover likes to transmit a constant stream to me. I think it helps her nerves.”

Stomping down an irrational wave of jealousy, Aoi responded, “Akane’s got too many lines open for that. Probably havin’ a chat with her fiancé right now, just for the hell of it.”

“Do you believe she tells him more than she tells you?” asked Light.

Though his lip twitched at the thought, Aoi shook his head. “She probably doesn’t tell him everything, either,” he said. “I know why she does it. She doesn’t want us to worry, and if we knew everything she was gettin’ herself into, we’d probably have somethin’ to worry about.” He leaned his head against the window, staring at the stars that made it through the polluted sky to shine light in his eyes. “But I’m gonna worry no matter what, right? Wish she’d just tell me so I know how much I need to be worrying.”

He stole a quick glance at Light’s thoughtful visage before realizing he could let his eyes linger longer. Light made Aoi nervous. He always knew more than he should for a man of his ability, and he never let on just how much he knew. In the stiff silence, Aoi stared long and hard at Light as if expecting him to look back, revealing that he had never been blind at all.

“So what’s Clover been up to?” he asked, scratching his scalp. “Maybe we can piece together more about this mission from what she’s tellin’ you. You know she talks more than she’s supposed to.”

Light did not respond. When Aoi glanced over again, his unseeing eyes were wide open.

“We have to go,” he said in a trembling voice. “Something… something’s gone wrong.”

Panic flooded Aoi’s chest. He channeled it into action.

“Go where?” he demanded, unlocking the car doors. “Abandon ship and call for backup? Or are we goin’ in?”

“Clover believes we should go in.”

Aoi’s hand shook as it gripped the car door handle. “Is she right?”

“I think…” Light’s hand fell on his own door handle. “I think time is of the essence.”

“Gas masks in the glovebox,” Aoi barked, kicking open his door. “I got Soporil grenades in the trunk. We’re gonna flood the place.”

He stuffed the pockets of his cargo pants with white canisters of military-grade knockout gas. When the last one would not fit without tearing fabric, he shut the trunk with a swear. Having secured one of the gas masks around his neck, Light held out the other for Aoi, who hooked it over his wrist and pressed the aerosol can of anesthetic into Light’s hand.

“Press down the top and slide it back to lock it,” he said. His hands shook as he pulled Light’s fingers to the grooves in the nozzle. “You can just hold it down and spray it in someone’s face about five seconds to knock ’em out. I got eight of these—you save yours for when you need it.”

Light’s skin felt cold and dry under Aoi’s fingers. Just as he was about to let go of the can, he made the connection.

“Shit, did I do all that with your fake hand?”

Light gave a gentle laugh. “It makes little difference. Sigma has ensured that I am equipped with the finest in motor and sensory controls.”

He lifted his index finger from the top of the can. The tip grazed the underside of Aoi’s wrist and traced down into his palm as Light curled his finger.

“Oh, my apologies,” Light said, pulling his left hand back. “Do I still need to warn you before I make physical contact with you? I may need to do so for orientation from time to time.”

“It’s—it’s fine.” Aoi snatched his hands back. “Just don’t… touch my hair like a creep.”

He threw his gas mask over his head and tightened the strap in a swift, well-practiced motion. His hand was still shaking, almost burning, from Light’s touch.

Rather than lend a guiding hand to the blind man, Aoi said, “Follow me,” and let his thick boots make loud claps against the pavement as he ran. Light stayed close behind.

A man swirling a near-empty beer bottle leaned against the railing separating the sidewalk from the stairway to the basement entrance of an ugly apartment in a bad part of town. Aoi never knew why he had a sense for these things, whether it was morphogenetic premonition or just too much experience, but he was ready when the man, seeing two figures fast approaching, smashed the bottle against the pavement. The liquid that splashed out had neither odor nor color; it was not beer, but it seemed like it was only water. Ducking under the secret guard’s first swings, Aoi launched his heel into the man’s skull. There was no crack, but he went down with a solid thud.

“Let’s go,” Aoi ordered as he vaulted over the railing to the top of the stairs.

“Shit!”

Aoi whirled around, barely recognizing the voice through the panic and profanity, to see Light sailing headlong towards him. His split second reflexes pinned them both to the brick wall of the building, Light hugged to his chest.

“Fuck. There were stairs. Fuck, man, I’m sorry, I—”

Light shook his head, groping for the wall to find his balance. “I knew there were stairs. I should have—I knew, I just wasn’t thinking.”

“I’ll tell you when there’s stairs and shit. C’mon.”

“I felt the railing, I heard the echo. I should have—”

“But your sister’s in trouble and you can’t think, it’s fine. Stay on this side, there’s broken glass.” Aoi kept in synchronized stride with Light. “And… three more steps.”

With that warning, Light came to a perfect stop at the base of the stairs. They slipped on their gas masks, kicked in the door, and tossed a Soporil smoke bomb inside. The men guarding the entrance dropped like flies before they could draw their weapons.

Aoi grabbed the canister off of an ugly linoleum floor on his way past the bodies, noting with horror the size of the guns hanging around their necks. Though the white cloud of Soporil obscured the details, the interior of the nondescript building resembled an industrial complex, with cinderblock walls branching into many wide hallways. “Where we headed?” he asked, his voice muffled by the mask.

“Clover is en route to a weapons storage facility, and Alice should be waiting for her there,” Light said, his voice low.

“Weapons? Seriously?” Aoi groaned. “These guys are in the middle of a city! I thought this was just your run-of-the-mill cult, not an armed militia!”

“Clover’s transmitting the path. There seems to be a door on the left to a staircase, going down?”

“Got it.” Aoi yanked open the door. “Hey, watch out, there’s stairs.”

“My deepest thanks for the warning.”

The hiss of Soporil in Aoi’s hand grew weaker as they descended the staircase, leaving a thinning cloud of white smoke on their trail. They crossed paths with no one else on the way down.

“They’re at the very base of the building, but this staircase won’t take us all the way there,” Light explained. “We’ll find an elevator that requires keycard access for the lower floors, and then we can access the weapons storage room.”

“Keycard. How we supposed to get a keycard?”

“We’ll come up with an alternative,” said Light too optimistically.

“Just don’t fuck this up,” growled Aoi. “That’s where Clover and Alice are, right? What about—”

“Clover doesn’t know,” Light said sternly. “You’ll need to contact her.”

Aoi closed his eyes, trying not to slow his steps in the meantime, and let the cacophony of footfalls in the concrete stairwell blend into a white noise. He pictured his sister’s face, the way it brightened with a smile.

Akane, it’s me, he called. Clover said there’s trouble. Light and I are inside. Where are you?

Silence.

“We’ll go after Clover and Alice first,” Aoi said. “We’ll hear back from her by then, right?”

The Soporil grenade had gone quiet. Light pulled his gas mask down, wiped the sweat from his face, and strapped it back on, panting through the ventilator.

Once they were tired of running, they wordlessly fell into a quiet sneak. Aoi peered through the narrow window of the final door in the stairwell. “I need your ears,” he whispered to Light. A man clutching an assault rifle hovered near the distant elevator. “You hear more than I can. You hear someone comin’, you tell me.”

“Do you know where to go?” asked Light.

Against all reason, he did. He could barely see the opening for the alcove where the elevator resided, but he knew to go that way. The thought had been planted and taken root in his mind as though it had always been there.

“Must be Akane,” he muttered.

The armed guard drifted into a different hallway. Aoi checked the immediate surroundings again before leaning into the door to open it. He kept a Soporil can in his left hand as he rolled his quiet feet along the steel-tiled floor. He was not too quiet for Light to follow in perfect step.

They leapt across the hallway to the elevator. “What now?” Aoi hissed. “How do we do this without the keycard?”

Light replied by reaching for the buttons on the wall and pressing the top one. Aoi punched him in the arm to keep from screaming in frustration.

“Fuckhead! You called it to go up, not down!” he whisper-shouted.

Light nodded. He was not speaking, which made Aoi think it was best to hold his tongue, as well.

The elevator made no noise other than the mechanical whirr as it arrived and the doors opened. Light leaned close to Aoi and lifted the mask from his face to whisper, “Send it to an upper floor, but don’t go inside.”

Aoi could not move from Light’s side until the shiver had passed from the back of his neck all the way down his spine. He leaned around the doorway, pressed the topmost industrial button, and jumped back. The doors closed, and the whirring sailed upwards.

“Now,” said Light, “we pry open the doors and climb down the elevator cable.”

Aoi punched Light to keep from yelling again, but this time he still let a desperate, “What the fuck?!” slide out of his lips unvoiced.

“Do you have an alternative?”

To Aoi’s happy surprise, the doors yielded to their pulling within seconds. Inside the cavernous darkness of the elevator shaft were two steel cables well out of arm’s reach. “Gonna have to jump to get to the cable,” he warned Light. “Probably… probably a running jump. Shit, how…”

“About how many feet away?” asked Light.

Aoi crouched low to the edge of the floor and squinted into the dark. “What's one-seventy in feet, five? Six?”

Light tentatively toed the landing before the abyss as Aoi’s head buzzed with strategies. The echo of slow footsteps interrupted the mental picture of his best idea before he could decide what was wrong with it.

He jumped up and dragged Light away from the gaping doorway. “Run with me, run it with me,” he hissed. “I’ll tell you when to jump. Go, go!”

They took off at a sprint. Eyes locked on their feet, Aoi gave a speedy countdown to time the leap. Light sprang forward with perfect rhythm, his body angled straight for the cable. On the other hand, Aoi, so absorbed in ensuring Light made it to safety, stumbled on his jump. His fingertips grazed the cable. There was only blackness below him.

His right hand squeezed around Light’s sleeve, and his left jumped to join it. Light inhaled sharply as Aoi’s weight tugged hard against him.

“Shit, you okay?” Aoi asked, clamoring for the cable. “I—”

Rapid gunfire cut him off. He hooked his legs around the cable as white flashes lit up the empty shaft. Intense friction burned his legs through his pants as he let gravity drag him down. Light was only inches above him.

As soon as his feet banged against machinery, he stumbled away from the cable, barely able to keep his footing over pulley rigs, generators, and motors. He grabbed a fold of Light’s jacket and pulled him against the same wall from which light spilled into the dark corridor from above. From there, they could both locate the door out and avoid the continued gunfire from the guard, who seemed to have lost sight of them. The shots fired in short bursts in random directions, searching for a reaction.

“Up about six—ah, two meters,” Light whispered, patting the wall. “We’ll pry this open next.”

Before Aoi could hop up to reach the doors, there was a long silence from the gunman above. The click of a magazine echoed down the long, hollow shaft to reach their ears. Then, the gunfire began a steady, uninterrupted stream.

“The cable,” Light realized. “He’s going to break the cable and crush us with the elevator.”

Aoi could not find purchase on the door when he jumped up to reach it, but Light was tall enough to grab the bottom without jumping. In moments, they discovered he was also strong enough to yank the door open himself, just as they heard a snap and a steel cable rattling like a whip as it sped upwards on one side.

Light had only shoved the door open wide enough for them to fit through one at a time. His hands were already gripping the floor, in prime position to hoist himself up. Despite this, in a desperate bid of self-preservation, Aoi scrambled for the tiny opening, nearly stepping on Light’s arms to push himself to safety. It was only as an afterthought that he turned around and reached back for Light. Their hands clasped. Aoi yanked up and back with all his might.

His breath was squeezed out of his chest at the same moment he heard the horrific crash. When he opened his eyes, he was cast in Light’s shadow. His mind was still reeling from how it felt to have Light’s warm weight on his chest, long after Light yanked him to his feet and dragged him back against the wall. It was all the better that he could not breathe. Light pressed a finger to his lips, cupping a hand around his ear.

Aoi’s eyes widened when they fell on Light’s left shoulder. “Oh no,” he exhaled.

Light cocked his head in inquiry.

Aoi shook his head, then whispered, “Nothin’, it’s… Later.”

Light nodded. He tilted the angle of his hand to collect sounds from all over the hall. His brow creased when he found none.

“I don’t understand. Logically speaking, this should be the most heavily guarded floor,” he murmured. He freed his glistening face from the gas mask and combed his hair back from his eyes with a soft sigh. “Was something the matter?”

Aoi had all but lost the capacity to speak. The alternative was to touch Light’s shoulder where a crescent of white peeked out from underneath navy blue. He swallowed, rubbed his throat, and stared at the ground to avoid looking at Light any longer.

“Your… I think I ripped your jacket,” he squeaked. “The sleeve’s ripped.”

Light placed a hand on his shoulder and felt his buttoned shirt through the rent in the seam of his jacket. “What am I wearing?” he mumbled to himself, patting his chest. When he touched a handful of zippers, he smiled. “Serendipitous. I’ve never much liked this impractical thing, but Clover always insisted it looked too nice to get rid of.”

“Yeah,” Aoi blurted, then covered his flaming red face with both hands and leaned against the wall while fervently hoping Light did not notice what he had said. Over the rush of blood pumping in his ears, he heard something ringing in his head.

The enemy has been made aware that I was not the only infiltrator. Please tell Light to alert Clover.

Her voice was cold with focus, the way it always was when there was something else going on that she did not want him to know.

“Message from Akane,” he said. “They know she wasn’t the only infiltrator. Tell your sister.”

Light gave a quick nod at the same moment the realization punched Aoi in the gut, grabbed hold of his innards, and dragged him down.

“Why do they know Akane was an infiltrator?” he asked weakly.

Light had never told him the reason they needed to enter the cult’s headquarters. It was Aoi’s fault for never asking. He should have guessed by Light’s relative calm that nothing ill had befallen Clover. Alice never got into a fieldwork snafu that she could not handle herself. There was only one person that could have been in danger this whole time.

Where are you? he begged.

Again, only silence.

A hand gripped his shoulder tightly and his eyes shot open. “Aoi, please, remain calm,” uttered Light.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me she was in trouble?!”

“Because I assumed you’d become as distraught as you are right now,” he said, “and I needed you to remain calm.”

“I’m ‘distraught’ because you didn’t tell me!” Aoi shot back. “Where is she? What happened? Does Clover know anything?”

“Clover was watching camera feeds in the security room and saw her captured. That is all we know.”

Aoi shuddered as he envisioned men pointing assault rifles at his little sister.

“Aoi, I know this is difficult, but I need you to remain calm,” Light said again, his voice soft and close. “You’ve just heard from her, so she is undoubtedly safe. Our wisest option is to find Alice and Clover first while we wait for Akane to transmit her location.”

“Yeah, I know!” Aoi shoved at Light’s chest with two palms. “Let’s keep moving!”

Light was so stunned that his eyelids parted a bit. “You… don’t object,” he said, almost suspiciously.

“’Course not. Akane’s handled herself this far.”

Light’s hand slipped slowly from Aoi’s shoulder down his arm. Aoi narrowly avoided thinking about how hot and giddy he would feel had he not been wearing a leather jacket to protect his bare skin from Light’s touch.

“You’d be too worried if it was Clover, huh?” he realized. “She’s got combat training, man. You gotta believe in her, too.”

Light started to smile. It was the last thing Aoi saw before everything was plunged into darkness.

A yell flew from his throat, probably a curse, but he did not hear himself over the clicks and pops of fluorescent lights shutting down in unnatural unison. His hands lashed out towards Light to grab hold of him, to stay connected in the thick darkness that had filled the hall.

“What happened?” asked Light.

Aoi rolled his eyes. “Blackout, not that it makes any damn difference to you, I guess,” he grumbled.

“Curious,” Light murmured. “Perhaps some kind of electrical failure caused by our elevator mishaps?”

“Kinda delayed reaction,” said Aoi, turning his head towards where he remembered the elevator had been. “This doesn’t feel like a power failure. It’s pitch black, there’s no emergency lights or anything.”

“There is one emergency Light.”

The joke only landed in Aoi’s head when he felt Light’s hand secure its hold on his forearm. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he groaned.

“You have to admit, I may have an advantage in this situation,” said Light. “I’m beginning to understand why I was placed on this mission.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, footsteps pounded down the corridor. Aoi pressed himself flat against the wall and held his breath. He felt the puff of air on his face from a bullet whizzing past before he heard the bang of a gun going off. Panic lit a fire in his chest and he took off running in a random direction just to be a moving target. He did not notice until it was too late that Light’s fingers had slipped away from his arm.

His hand dove into his pocket for Soporil, then froze. Light had removed his gas mask before the outage. Aoi had no way of knowing whether he had put it back on during the attack. He could have shouted, should have shouted a warning, then a little Soporil could have saved them both, but he was too petrified by the thought of betraying his location in the darkness by the sound of his voice. The Soporil stayed in his pocket.

Little by little, the volume of gunfire died away. Fighting his instinct to flee, Aoi crept towards the dwindling sounds, low to the ground and close to the wall. If the attackers had ceased shooting, they thought their bullets had found their targets. Even if he managed to take them by surprise, Aoi had no idea how he planned to defeat a barrage of gunmen in the dark without resorting to Soporil—he had to believe Light was alive enough for that to matter.

Before he realized someone had gotten behind him, he felt an arm snake under his chin and squeeze. With a choked sound, the breath he had been holding escaped, and he could not take another. A hand pressed to his head and gripped his hair, poised to snap his neck.

Instead, the fingers of that hand stroked his hair before falling away. “Aoi, good,” breathed Light.

“Light!” Aoi almost shouted. One last wave of adrenaline-induced heat flooded through his body as he spun around and grabbed hold of Light’s arms. “God, did you—how did you—are you okay?!”

“Shh. Stay close to me.”

Aoi pulled himself nearer by the fold of cloth that he had clasped in his fist. With one ear, he could hear Light trying not to pant; with the other, he heard a pounding heartbeat. He wanted to ask Light what he had heard, whether there were more gunmen approaching from the corridor, whether the ones that he had felled were truly incapacitated or just lying in wait. At the soft, sure touch of Light’s hand against his back, Aoi’s breathing slowed. He closed his eyes.

An eternity later, he felt the tickle of a strand of flaxen hair against his cheek. “There seems to be no one else in the immediate vicinity,” Light whispered, his breath hot on Aoi’s ear. “And, while I can’t say I mind, I didn’t mean that close.”

Aoi jumped back, stringing together whispered profanities that only grew more intense when his feet knocked into a body on the floor behind him. “I thought you were—you were—”

“Dead? Really, you have such little faith in me,” sighed Light.

“That’s not what I—” He cut himself off with another round of swears. The heat in his face came in equal parts from embarrassment and anger, not at Light, but at himself.

“Is something the matter?”

“I left you to die,” Aoi seethed. “I heard guns and I took off running without you. And—the elevator—I…”

“You seem to be angry at yourself for instinctively acting in your own self-interest while your life is at stake,” Light said. “That’s hardly fair. What would you intend to do instead, die for me?”

Aoi opened his mouth, but not even air came out. When his instincts were not getting the better of him, Light’s rhetorical question almost sounded reasonable. It was not until now that he realized just how dangerously far he had fallen.

“Let’s search their bodies,” Light said. “Take a gun, of course, but I suspect they have some sort of night-vision goggles that allowed them to see us in the darkness.”

With trembling hands, Aoi patted along the unmoving chest of the body below him. The neck was warm and wet. He had to follow it at an odd angle to find the face. Had Light not known the texture of his hair, Aoi would be lying alongside this man in the same condition. When his fingers touched open eyes, he sucked in a gasp and pulled his arms to his chest.

“How peculiar. I can’t seem to find anything on his face,” Light murmured. “Clover did allude to this religious group’s possible interest in genetics. Perhaps these are a breed of warrior with an inherent ability to see in low lighting. Such a trait is common in certain monochromatically colorblind individuals—it is possible for their eyes to contain no cones, which detect color, thus there remains a higher concentration of rods to detect light.”

Aoi did not know whether it was a quality in his voice or the genuine interest with which he spoke that made Light so calming to listen to. He had had this effect on the frightened children in the first Nonary Game when he talked about his little sister and recited flower language. Inhaling and exhaling to the rhythm of Light’s sentences, Aoi relaxed in the darkness.

“This would suggest that the facility is not, in fact, pitch black, as you stated,” Light said. “Is there a trace amount of light? Have your eyes better adjusted?”

Raising his gas mask, Aoi opened his eyes wide. There was a slight sheen on the floor. He thought he could see the sharp edges where walls turned corners near the elevator. There were darker blotches on the floor where bodies lay.

“I can see a little bit, I guess,” he muttered. “Ain’t much, though.”

“It’s enough that I’ll trust you with this instead of myself,” said Light. Aoi felt the butt of a large gun against his chest. Light pointed it up at the ceiling while Aoi found his grip near the trigger.

He knew Light had stood by the sound of his clothes rustling. He could follow the footsteps. By the echo, he knew that they were headed down a wide hallway. This was Light’s world.

“Stand in front of me, since you have the gun,” said Light. “Keep one hand on the wall as you walk. We’ll be turning left at the next corner. Clover and Alice intend to meet us.”

He placed a hand on Aoi’s shoulder as a soft point of contact between them that kept Aoi from feeling lost and alone. With a gentle nudge, Light urged Aoi forward.

“We should consider ways to artificially improve your low light vision,” he murmured. “The pupils dilate during arousal, although…”

It felt as though something in Aoi’s chest burst when his heart went from zero to sixty in half a second. His breath caught in his throat and made his voice crack when he stuttered, “I-if you try somethin’, I’ll…”

“I assumed you were already in enough of a state of panic from the current circumstances,” said Light. “This may be the best your vision will get. Keep your eyes moving; you have more rods at the edges of your retina than in your direct line of sight.”

Aoi let out a shaky breath. Of course Light had been talking about arousal in the general, scientific sense.

“Would you say you are sufficiently aroused, Aoi?” Light asked.

He flinched. “Do you hafta say it like that?”

“I suppose I don’t.” When next he spoke, his voice came from inches behind Aoi’s left ear. “Aoi Kurashiki, please tell me, what arouses you?”

A strangled noise from his tight throat came through his clenched teeth. He came to a sudden stop as his legs faltered. Against the empty back pocket of his pants, he felt something long and hard when Light stumbled into him.

“I assure you, that was my can of Soporil. Let’s continue.”

Aoi sank his teeth into his lower lip and exhaled to resist letting out a whopping fuck. Hot blood pounded in his face. There were two ways this night was going to go down, and he could describe either of them as a mistake he might regret for the rest of his life. He lacked just enough foresight to prefer the option in which he bottled up these raging feelings and let them fester in secret until their glorious, long-overdue death.

“This is not just my imagination, is it,” said Light, his voice suddenly low and serious. “Your vision has improved in the past few minutes. Up ahead, you see the faint edge of the corner we are to turn, correct?”

There was a slight shift in the level of blackness along the wall. Aoi interpreted it as a possible hall branching off to the left.

“Wait,” Aoi said. “How the hell do you know that?”

“How did you know where the elevators were?”

He had suspected from the onset that that knowledge had come to him through the morphogenetic field. It had never occurred to him that the transmitter was not Akane, whose mission was elsewhere, who had likely never used the elevator.

“We’ve lived similar experiences and are facing increasingly similar circumstances,” said Light. “When open minds have similar thought patterns and feelings, it brings them into resonance.”

Aoi’s legs had gone so weak that when Light tugged on his shoulder, he stumbled into turning around. Light’s breath touched his face.

“Combining our senses may be our best option to navigate through the darkness,” he said. “My hearing, Clover’s guidance, and your sight. For everyone’s sake, we must try to resonate.”

Light was trying to enter his head. Light Field had already been inside his head. In perfect resonance, Light would feel and know everything.

“Focus, Aoi. Anything you wish to hide from me, you must let go,” Light pleaded. “I’m opening myself up to you. Please, let me in.”

Aoi could not move, could not breathe, could not think. His mind was in too much turmoil to resonate with anyone, let alone Light Field, who would enter his head and at once find a secret still burning after ten years. That was the only blockade obstructing their resonance. It was stupid, it was foolish, it was childish, and it was time to let the secret burn to the ground. Squeezing his eyes shut, he grabbed Light’s stupid, pretty face by the chin and smashed their lips together.

For one magical moment, he thought Light was kissing him back. He thought that Light’s hand had come to his cheek out of passion, not as a blind motion to discern what had hit his face. For that moment, he thought that he had entered a different world where his life was not always such a giant mess in which everything went tragically, horribly wrong. His body turned cold and stiff when the kiss ended with a snap.

The man with a witty comeback for everything was at a loss for words. “You… me?” Light uttered. “That was what you were… Why?”

“Fuck if I know, you ass,” Aoi hissed, snatching the collar of Light’s shirt in a fist, “but that’s what I’m dealin’ with here.”

He felt a lump in his throat and a hollowness in his chest as he gave Light one good shake before bringing his hand to his forehead with a heavy sigh.

“Wait, I—your hair,” Light stammered. “I just wanted to ask…”

Aoi’s heart skipped a beat. He felt Light’s cool touch on the back of his neck, fingers sliding up towards his hairline.

“Is it alright if I touch your hair now?”

When Aoi next spoke, he had lost his voice. “Are you fucking with me?” he squeaked.

“No.” Light’s other hand came to Aoi’s cheek, thumb sliding towards his mouth, running over his lips. “But I… would be open to that possibility in due time.”

He did not have the chance to figure out what exactly Light was saying before he felt his mouth captured by the most compelling pair of lips he had ever had the pleasure of kissing. The taste of bitter black tea lingered in the wetness of those soft lips. By the strength of his presence, Light commanded the world to stand still, to sing a symphony out of silence, to wrap Aoi in a blanket of warmth and wonder and all of the things he thought he did not believe in. He went weak with pleasure as Light threaded fingers through locks of his hair. For a long time after Light’s lips feathered away, Aoi stood quivering, his mind floating up into the air.

“That… explains the… sporadic resonance,” Light exhaled. “Unfortunately, I… I don’t believe I’ll be able to… control it now that… well, now that I realize the true nature of the circumstances at hand.”

His words washed over Aoi, who retained sounds but little meaning. Though Light was not breathless like Aoi, his sentences stopped and started in strange places, breaking the usual musicality of his speech. Aoi felt like an intruder into a special, personal place where Light composed himself before broadcasting his image to the rest of the world.

“And this has not improved our resonance.” Light’s hands fell away, leaving a chill on Aoi’s skin and scalp where there had once been warmth. “This… this is foolish. We’re wasting time. We must keep moving.”

The darkness was isolating. Aoi could not identify the strange quality that had taken hold of Light’s voice, nor did he have a chance at reading Light’s expression. The absence of these cues made Light sound cold. Aoi shifted closer to the wall to get his bearings, turn around, and trudge silently onwards around the corner that had prompted a moment that now felt like nothing more than a hazy dream. He slid the tip of his tongue tentatively over his lips. The taste of Light was the only remaining evidence of what had happened. Light kept his distance and his hands to himself. The only thing that kept Aoi from asking the question forming in the pit of his stomach was his fear of the answer.

The hand he kept to the wall caught on a groove unlike those he had touched before. Aoi followed the vertical gap up and down. Just above his waist level, he found a cool, metal protrusion which pieced the whole image together. It was—

“A door,” Light identified at once.

His hand moved with swift precision from the space between the door and the surrounding wall to the door handle, fingers brushing against Aoi’s with harsh briefness.

“I believe this leads to the weapon storage chamber,” Light explained, bringing his hand back to his side. “It’s too dangerous for us to wander through in the dark. Alice and Clover will be exiting the door shortly, now that I’ve told them the surroundings are clear.”

They did not arrive shortly enough for the silence that fell between the boys to feel stiff and awkward. The two broke it at the same time, Light with a hesitant, “Aoi,” and Aoi with a falsely nonchalant, “Hey, uh,” and so both ceased speaking.

“Go ahead,” Light insisted.

Aoi swallowed. “I was just… wondering,” he began, trepidation creeping into the wandering pitch of his voice, “earlier, when we were… were you just doing that to try to resonate, or—”

A swear flew from his lips when something white seared into his eyes in a sudden flash. He almost dropped his gun to shield his face with his hands.

“Light!” called a small, girlish voice. Behind the squeak of a door hinge was the click of high heels against the metal floor.

“Jesus, Clover, get that outta my face!” Aoi snapped, squinting through the shadow cast by his arm. “God, I was just startin’ to see around here!”

He did not realize how close to resonance he and Light had come, nor how vivid his world had been in those moments, until the connection fizzled out on Light’s end. Sounds lost their crispness; some disappeared altogether. He could no longer feel what Light’s careful fingers touched.

When Light darted to Clover’s side and swept her into an embrace, the flashlight in her hand pointed towards the ceiling. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he sighed.

“Lights out, Clover. You’re ruining our vision and giving away our location,” said Alice, frustration rampant in her low voice. “We’ll hold this position for a minute to adjust to the darkness, then we need to evacuate. We’ve gotten all the intel we can, even though it’s not everything we came for.”

“Gettin’ out’s gonna be a little difficult without the elevator,” Aoi muttered.

“We think we know where there’s an emergency staircase,” said Clover, clicking off her flashlight to drown them in renewed darkness. “Once the power went out, we knew for sure there had to be another way to get down here, right?”

“Clover, share everything you can see with me,” said Light. “I’ll show you what I know.”

An unwanted pang of jealousy knocked Aoi in the chest. It made logical sense for the siblings to resonate. They had trained together, both professionally with SOIS and from a lifetime of experience with one another. On the other hand, Aoi had only managed to send Light a single snapshot of his surroundings on what was likely a fluke. Despite knowing this, he could not keep from feeling somehow secondary, maybe even used, until a cool hand found his shoulder.

“You were asking me a question earlier,” Light said.

Aoi shivered, curling his arms around his churning stomach. “Forget it,” he mumbled. “It’s nothin’. We got bigger problems.”

“Indeed.”

The hand on his shoulder crept up his neck to his cheek. In the space between thumb and forefinger, he felt the cool point of Light’s nose, then the intoxicating warmth of lips leaving a silent caress on his skin.

“Let’s discuss it later,” said Light, a smile in his voice. “You should focus on locating Akane.”

Butterflies flew from his stomach, setting off a tingling fire under his skin all the way out to his fingertips. He nodded, then realized no one could see him do it, so he stuttered, “S-sure,” then realized Light’s hand was still on his cheek and had felt the nod in the first place.

“Ah, Clover, very nice,” Light declared. His hand fell to Aoi’s shoulder to pull him away from the wall. “Shall we?”

As the gang took off, Aoi centered himself in the morphogenetic field to forget the emotional whiplash Light was once again sending him through. Resonance with Akane was comforting, calming. Once he felt her presence alongside him, all of his other feelings finally washed away.

We got Alice and Clover, he said. Tell me where you are. We’ll come find you, we’ll get you outta there.

Still there was no response.

“She’s not talking,” he growled. “Alice, Clover, do you know anything?”

“The last time I saw her, she was on the fourth floor down,” Clover said. “She was pulling documents from their server room when they caught her.”

“No doubt they’ve destroyed her drive,” Alice muttered. “That was the most important part of this mission. Their weapons tech is nothing special, just low-level military-grade guns and explosives. What we could really use is a roster of names to add to our watch list, but now, we’ve lost it.”

The fingers on Aoi’s shoulder slid down to his hand as Light said, “We’ll reevaluate later. Let’s focus our mental efforts on Akane.”

Clover knows where you were when you were captured, so you can show me the path you took from there. We’re headin’ up now. You still on the same floor?

Aoi squeezed Light’s hand when there was no reply.

Just say something so I know I’m getting through. Please, Akane.

“Turn left here,” Clover said in a voice just above a whisper. She pulled ahead to lead the way.

Worry cascaded from Aoi’s seized shoulders to his toes, which sprang forward before he ever heard the gun.

His chest rammed into Clover and shoved her down under the trajectory of the first shots. He raised his gun with the intent to fire back, but an irrational fear kept his finger off of the trigger. Conserving his forward momentum, he hauled Clover to her feet, possibly, and dragged her across the intersection to take cover behind the opposite wall, feeling pops under his heels.

“You okay?” he panted to Clover in as soft a voice as he could muster. “Didn’t get you?”

He felt her pull on his jacket. His hand found her hair—chemically treated—just in time to feel her nod.

The last echoes of the shots died out and gave way to silence. Eyes closed, Aoi pressed his back flat against the wall, inching towards the corner. He exhaled through pursed lips, letting his shoulders fall as his finger curled around the trigger.

Akane, for the love of God, tell me where you are before I start shooting at you by some stupid accident.

The unknown figure down the hall took two slow steps forward. They let another sudden barrage of bullets, searching for the intruders. Despite the ear-throbbing noise, Aoi heard nothing save for her voice.

It’s safe to shoot at anyone moving, said Akane.

As soon as the opposing gun stopped firing, Aoi whipped his rifle around the edge of the wall and sank his finger into the trigger. The recoil rattled his bones as he fired off a thick, blind spray of bullets into the dark. Over the cacophony, he heard a guttural cry when he struck his mark. The gun clattered to the ground from his hands, numb from the vibration.

“You were not given authorization to kill!” Alice shouted when the echoes of the shots died away.

What the fuck does that mean, Akane?! Aoi demanded, dropping to his knees. You can’t move?! Jesus, just tell me where you are!

“Clover, are you alright?!” Light called, darting to her side.

 “I’m okay! We’re both okay,” Clover replied, slightly out of breath. “Th-thanks, Santa.”

“It’s been over a year, Clover,” Aoi snapped. “My name’s still not Santa.”

Akane, don’t do this. Don’t pull this riddling bullshit. Talk to me.

Light crouched down as soon as he heard Aoi’s voice coming from lower than it should. “Aoi, what’s wrong?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“I think Akane’s in trouble,” Aoi uttered. “Something’s wrong. Something’s…”

I’m sorry, Aoi, I can’t concentrate. I’m trying not to hurt you.

Aoi forced every ounce of his soul to join her in resonance. The closer they came together, the more battered and weak she felt in his mind. Just tell me where you are, he said. What floor, what it looks like, anything. Hang onto me, Akane, just hang on.

Fire, she said. People. Blood.

“Fire,” he croaked. That alone could be enough to send her into a feverish haze, flitting across alternate worlds where she had burned alive.

“Fire?” asked Light.

The word vibrated against Aoi’s ear. He had collapsed into Light’s chest. He shoved himself unsteadily to his feet.

“Fire, people, blood,” he repeated. “That’s all she could tell me.”

“Well, it’s pitch black in here,” said Clover. “We should be able to find a fire pretty easy, right?”

Leave me behind, Akane pleaded.

In perfect resonance, all thoughts and senses are transmitted from one esper to her partner. Most resonant events are imperfect, meaning that only certain pieces of the transmitter’s experiences come through to the receiver.  Aoi had to concentrate on his thoughts in order to be sure to broadcast them to Akane, and she did the same. However, when an experience was already strong enough that it took the esper’s complete focus, it could become transmitted involuntarily. Such was often the case with injury. Aoi brought his forearms to his chest with the sudden conviction that his veins had been sliced open, a wash of wet and dry blood coating his skin.

I’m going to die.

“Shit!” Aoi shrieked. “Blood is hers. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, Akane…”

Tell Alice we have what we came for, she whispered. I’m sorry. I love you, Aoi.

Hot tears came to his eyes. The pain in his arms vanished as she faded from his mind.

“Aoi, do not panic. We need you,” Light said gravely.

Inhaling through his teeth, Aoi gripped the lapel of Light’s jacket. He hated relying on people. He hated when his emotions crept up on him and turned him into something weak and irrational. But the warmth of Light’s touch had a way of making all of that go away.

As if knowing without words that Aoi craved the comfort of his presence, Light hooked his arm over Aoi’s shoulder and pulled him closer, resting his lips in Aoi’s hair. “We can locate a fire from afar by the scent of smoke, and possibly by the general chaos, as Akane has mentioned people,” he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Once we’ve found the fire, we’ll find Akane easily and take her to the nearest hospital.”

Whether or not he was confident, he sounded it. Aoi nodded a number of times, controlling his breaths. “Just go. Let’s just go,” he mumbled.

As he pushed away from Light’s chest, Light caught his hand. Holding Light’s hand as they ran was something like holding onto the last good thing in the world, however ephemeral that good might be.

“Um… Light?” Clover asked hesitantly. “Santa?”

“What’s going on between you two?” Alice accused, a wry smile in her voice.

“Just a mutual understanding of circumstances,” Light replied without missing a beat.

The hidden staircase was a narrow, rickety spiral. Their pounding feet made the metal stairs ring out in discord. Despite the uncomfortable positioning, Light held fast to Aoi’s hand throughout the climb. The scenes were too similar: the boys racing up the metal staircase to freedom, the chance that Akane would be left behind to die in flames.

Clover ran her hand along the railing to feel for every landing, where she checked for a door, swung it open, and searched for a warm glow or a smoky scent. As soon as Aoi felt aches in his thighs and calves from the climb, he caught sight of Clover’s surprised face, cast in sudden light. He leapt to the doorway she had opened, desperate for a glimpse. The only fire he saw hung on the wall at the end of a lit torch.

“This feels creepy,” Clover mumbled. “This feels really, really creepy.”

“Here’s a plan.” Aoi fished into a back pocket for the jingling set of car keys, which he held out to Alice and Clover. “Light and I have gas masks, and I have a shit ton of Soporil. You guys go up, start the car, figure out how to get to a hospital. We’ll smoke this place up, grab Akane, and meet you guys up there.”

Clover snatched the keys from his hand. “Of course you have Soporil,” she muttered. “What is it with you and Soporil?”

“Hold on,” Alice said. “Why don’t you give me the gas mask?”

“’Cuz your girl clothes don’t have enough pockets to hold all these cans, and—and ’cuz she’s my sister and I’m gonna go save her.”

Aoi yanked Light through the door alongside him before kicking it shut. The sound echoed through the ominous hallway lying before them. The only light source was the torch on the wall, which Aoi grabbed. Beyond its sphere of light, the hall faded into inscrutable black.

“I believe Alice was only suggesting that she join you rather than me,” Light said.

Aoi scoffed. “You’re a better partner than she is any day, and that says a lot about her.”

Light’s smile was unusual for its lack of even a hint of arrogance. He had a childish look about him as his lips spread so wide he could not conceal his teeth. The torch Aoi held aloft cast an orange glow from its thick flame, fed by an oil-soaked wick, but Light’s cheeks looked darker, maybe redder. He shook his head before Aoi could get more than a glimpse of his face, pointing onwards into the darkness. Black smoke trailed behind them as their feet clattered down the long, empty hall.

Only seconds after they had begun running, Light pulled back on Aoi’s hand, his feet planted on the floor. “Voices,” he warned. “They won’t have heard us, but we should proceed quietly.”

Aoi heard nothing for another twenty seconds as he took the quickest, softest steps he could muster. Then there was a great hurrah of voices from a distance. Another twenty seconds passed before he could hear the lone voice of one man, and another twenty before he could understand words.

“…unclean… sacrifice… cast in flames…”

Light whipped his and Aoi’s arms to his side. He reached across Aoi’s chest to clap a hand on his opposite shoulder. “Remain calm,” he whispered.

“…for our kind… righteous of humanity…”

A raucous cheer erupted thereafter from the chests of men.

“Unfortunately, this female does not possess our gifts,” continued the speaker. “She is not fit for us to use. We have no need for her body.”

“Remain calm,” Light urged through gritted teeth, pushing back against Aoi’s surging shoulders.

“We have drained her blood from her unclean body, and we will consume it for strength!”

Another chorus of cheers rang out.

“Then, together, we will light this pyre to set an example for any would-be traitors, and to remove this impurity from our godly domain!”

The shouts came from behind an ornate set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Aoi slid his mask down over his face and pulled the straps taut.

“Light,” he growled, “just a heads-up. The Soporil plan’s gonna go a little different than I said.”

“Understood,” said Light, lifting the mask to his mouth. “I’ll follow your lead.”

“Count to three and open this door.” Aoi slipped a canister from his pocket and gave it a good shaking as he waited.

His eyes fell on Akane first when the scene unfolded, her ankles bound with rope to the top of a wooden pole. Her skin was pale against the wash of dark red running down her sliced forearms, dripping into a large bowl of etched glass, about a quarter full. Housed in a brick base around the pole was a pile of firewood and kindling. If he looked any longer, he would scream, he would vomit, he would faint and SHIFT out of this awful timeline.

Standing at the lectern before her was a squat, bald man with beady eyes. His face matched the voice Aoi had heard from the hallway. He lifted the torch just in front of the nozzle of the Soporil can, aiming at his first target.

The aerosol ignited as it passed through the flame of his torch. Savoring the sounds of screams from over his shoulder, he pressed closer to the crazed preacher, dousing every inch of the man’s body in fire.

“Who wants some?!” Aoi screamed at the audience of young men holding torches under their horrified faces. “You want some o’ this, motherfuckers?!”

Some men in the front row started forward, grimacing to conceal their shock. Evidently they wanted some.

Had they attacked in coordination, they might have had a chance of trapping Aoi amongst their combined flames. Instead, he dodged wild swings of the torches that came one at a time, a bright flare on the end to alert him of the trajectory. There was not a lick of remorse in his soul as he plunged the burning end of his torch into one stomach, two, three, leaving ugly, blackened brands on their skin.

The rest of the small crowd scampered for the door. Aoi should have let them off easy, should have locked open the nozzle on his Soporil can after blocking their exit, waiting for sleep to claim them. Instead, he hurled his torch into the thick of the swarm and yanked another canister from his pocket. With an unintelligible cry of war, he depressed and locked both cans and charged forward, aiming for torches at angles that caught humans in the flaming spray. He was impervious to the heat in the air surrounding him, already steeped in white-hot rage.

“Aoi!”

Tossing one of his Soporil grenades into the crowd, he turned to the sound of Light’s voice in time to see the waxy, pink face of the cult leader behind the flames of the torch raised over his head. He gave the flaming wooden club a wild downward swing. After knocking his arm aside on reflex, Aoi punched him in the throat with the butt of the remaining Soporil can. When his grip slackened around the torch, Aoi snatched it out of the air with a twist.

Light held Akane in the cradle of his arms, her elbows hooked around his neck to elevate her deep, long wounds. Aoi knew that the only way the blind man could have found and freed her so quickly was if he had seen the image of her through Aoi’s eyes. Perhaps it was only the flicker of fire playing tricks with the shadows, but Aoi thought he saw her eyelashes flutter.

He shoved open the door for Light, setting his new torch against it to char the varnish and light the wood underneath. Some desperate survivors, anger burned into their faces, surged towards the door. He launched his other can of Soporil at their heads, slammed the door shut, and pedaled back to Light.

“I’ll take her,” he panted, holding out his arms.

“You will not,” stated Light, hugging Akane’s limp body closer as he broke into a sprint down the hall. “There’s no time to waste.”

Aoi’s heart battered the insides of his ribcage as it pounded in time with his footfalls. “She’s,” he gasped, “is she—?”

“Unconscious. But her condition seems stable.” Light’s sentences fell off at the ends as the air rushed out of his mouth. “Breathing is regular. Pulse just slightly tachycardic. I don’t believe these men are particularly skilled at exsanguination.”

“They were filling a fucking punch bowl.”

“Yes, I noticed. From its depth and diameter, it doesn’t seem she’s lost much more than a quart. Ah, forgive me, in milliliters, that would be—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up! Fuck!”

The imagined horrors he had fought to suppress bubbled up in his mind. Men, young men, misogynistic and entitled young men had taken her as an object to be used. They might have done worse things to her than slice gashes from her wrists to her elbows to force her to reveal her mission. He envisioned the way they must have jeered at her, delighted by how it made her squirm, about the fire they would light under her living body.

“Why the fuck did they do this to her?!” Aoi shouted. “The fuck is wrong with these guys?!”

“I can tell you what I know about them from Clover’s more recent transmissions,” said Light. “The cult preys on disenchanted young men by praising their genetic superiority, though I can’t say whether that is real or imagined. They ensnare women for use in ritual sacrifice, or, if they are genetically compatible…”

He did not finish his sentence. Aoi did not want him to finish his sentence. His mind went into a blank, hot white to avoid thinking about how that sentence could have ended.

“Aoi, let go. She’ll be alright.”

His hand had clamped onto Akane’s shoulder of its own accord. Through the cotton of her dress’s sleeve, she felt cold.

“You need use of your hands more than I do,” Light huffed. “Keep the torch to light your way. If your other hand is feeling particularly empty, you may make use of your copious supply of Soporil.”

“What about the stairs?” Aoi asked. “Can you still—”

“With this amount of adrenaline, easily.” Light turned his head in Aoi’s direction, his gas mask hiding a sympathetic smile. “I swear to you, I will not allow any more harm to befall her. Stay focused.”

Although no one followed them through the hall, the danger of attack was not over. Aoi yanked open the door to the metal stairs and flew up them two at a time, casting the light of his torch around to search for any stragglers blocking their path. No one seemed to notice the sudden increase of light, nor the banging on the staircase. He half-ran, half-slid back down the steps to Light, where he hooked his free arm under Akane’s knees. They pounded up the remaining stairs together, each carrying half of her weight.

They had made it up almost two flights without incident when there was a bang of a door hitting a wall and angry voices filled the narrow stairwell, too muddled by echoes to make out the words.

“Above,” Light answered before Aoi had to ask from which direction the voices emanated. “And Clover and Alice are quite far from us.”

They were not resonating, not in the way Aoi knew resonance with Akane, but they had a tenuous morphogenetic connection that came through in moments of danger.

Aoi clenched the narrowest part of the torch in his teeth as he fished through his pocket for a grenade to unseal and launch upwards. He heard it clang and rattle from a satisfying distance away. The white smoke, heavy with vaporized Soporil, had a tendency to sink below atmospheric gases. Regardless, bodies slumped against the stairs within the next ten seconds. Aoi steered Light along the stairs cluttered with anesthetized humans and mismatched assault rifles.

As soon as Light gave the word that Clover and Alice had made it safely to the car undetected, Aoi became heavy-handed with the knockout gas. He set Akane back in Light’s capable arms at the top of the stairs before dropping his torch down the center of the spiral staircase. Light had received a safe path to the exit from Clover and would find it without trouble in the darkness. Aoi loaded his two free hands with two canisters each, the last four he had left. He tossed the first ahead of them before they exited the stairwell. He dropped the next about twenty meters after the first turn Light directed them around. A constant cloud of Soporil protected them from attack on their march to the exit, whether there were gunmen waiting in the wings or not.

Aoi found the broken door handle to the entrance with one empty hand, the other holding his final canister. “Is our ride ready?” he asked.

“They’ve been circling about, but they’re headed back now,” responded Light. “It should only take a minute or so.”

Aoi cracked open the last can to protect them for those remaining sixty seconds. He found Light’s shoulder with an outstretched hand, then followed it down to find Akane’s face. Her skin was damp with sweat. He combed sticky strands of hair out of her face.

“Don’t fret if she doesn’t wake up for some time,” said Light. “Remember, the Soporil—”

“She’s practically immune to it by now, we’ve messed with the stuff so much,” muttered Aoi. “Smack her hard enough and she’d wake up in a second, if she wasn’t…”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Light nudged him towards the door. “Our chauffeuses will be here shortly.”

Distant city lights made the world bloom with color and focus. Aoi held open the door, watching his sister’s pale face as it came into moonlight. He did not notice the man with the broken beer bottle behind him, awake and alive, until there was already an arm around his neck and a sharp point digging into his throat. The pressure on his trachea choked him too much to make a sound. He missed Light’s shoulder when he swung his arm forward.

Light, help me.

The words felt like they fell into the void. The throb of his pulse told him that it was his carotid artery under the broken glass piercing his skin. His vision was going white.

Three seconds later, the arm around his neck had gone limp. Two seconds after that, the man standing guard outside the cult house fell unconscious for at least the second time that night. Light dropped his can of Soporil with a sharp clang and yanked Aoi closer by the collar.

“Are you alright?” he whispered in Aoi’s ear, running his hands along Aoi’s chest. “Did he injure you?”

Aoi shivered and touched his neck. He felt a sting from the salt of sweat on his fingertip, which came back with a thin smear of blood. “Not… not bad. I’m fine. You heard when I…”

“I did.”

Aoi felt his whole body glow when their foreheads touched, fighting to reach each other above the bulky ventilators of their gas masks.

“I told Alice and Clover to take another lap as soon as I heard you,” Light sighed. “Where did he…?”

His fingers stuttered over the hem of Aoi’s shirt, surprised to find it so soon.

“Aoi Kurashiki, are you wearing a crop top?”

Aoi’s face flushed with heat as Light’s cold hand slid further down, reading the muscular contour of his skinny abdomen. “Knock it off!” he snapped, jumping backwards against the concrete wall surrounding the stairway. “He scratched me in the neck, alright?! Where’s—?”

He found Akane deposited along the stairs. It was no trick of the light this time when her eyelashes fluttered.

He did not know how he flew past Light and scooped up his sister in his arms. When he made sense of himself again, her warm weight was settled against his chest, her breaths soft and even. He had ripped off his gas mask, despite the lingering scent of Soporil.

“Aoi,” she managed to whisper. “I told you… not to…”

“Hey, Akane, remember that one time I helped you set up a murder factory for nine years so I could save your life?” Aoi said. “Rescuing you from a cult, though? Nah. Can't do it.”

He tried to take his usual sarcastic tone with her, but his throat was swelling shut, and his eyes were filling with something hot. She watched him through a slow blink, then wrinkled her nose.

“Soporil,” she identified.

“Just… just sleep if it’s got you,” Aoi said hoarsely. “You’re gonna be okay. I’m here.”

“No, I… Junpei,” she insisted, then closed her eyes.

A strained smile fought its way onto his face. “Yeah, tell him I saved you,” he tried to laugh. “Tell him he owes me.”

But when her lips moved along with her morphogenetic message to her fiancé, he clearly saw her mouthing, “Light saved me.”

“No, what?!” Aoi cried. “It was me! He just carried you! I was the one who went in there and—”

His shoulders sank when Light’s arms wrapped around them. Light’s cheek was cool and soft against Aoi’s.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you saved my sister first,” he murmured. “The least I could do to thank you was to rescue yours.”

“Put your—your mask back on,” Aoi mumbled. “The Soporil’s still…”

Light slid it back up to his face with a sigh. “We’ve got a bit of time,” he said. “Could you help me procure something to bandage your sister’s wounds?”

As they waited for Alice and Clover to arrive, Aoi ripped away the partially-detached sleeve of Light’s jacket, then they flipped positions and tore off the other one. The remainder of his bomber jacket cut sharp angles in his silhouette with its epaulet buttons, diagonal zippers, and belted waistline. Aside from the loose blue threads clinging to his white sleeves, he had the aura of a young prince engaged in rebellion.

“We’ll tie these in the car,” said Light, so Aoi stuffed the removed sleeves into his pockets. “Clover and Alice are—”

The door behind them burst open.

Aoi barely saw a thing. He grabbed Akane by the shoulders, and then the stairs passed under his feet, then he was diving into an open car door, all to the bangs of gunshots barely missing their marks. He, Akane, and Light were still in a pileup in the backseat when the car lurched forward.

“Are any of you hurt?! Clover?!”

“I’m fine! I don’t think they shot at the car at all, Alice.”

Aoi was sandwiched between Akane, half-dangling off of the car seats on the bottom of the people pile, and Light, crouching over him with his fingers still on the door handle he had slammed shut behind them. Aoi did not trust his frantic, shaking hands enough to go near Akane’s injured arms as he pulled her closer.

“You okay, Akane?” he panted. “You still awake?”

She blinked her glassy eyes open. It was all he needed to see.

“Can you remember anything from the files you were able to pull up before they found you?” Alice demanded as she zipped through deserted red lights and darted around corners. Aoi was dimly aware of Light climbing over him and Akane to find the less crowded seat behind Alice. “Anything unusual, any names—anything at all.”

Akane frowned at Aoi. “I… I told you to tell her,” she mumbled. “Tell Alice I got everything.”

Alice’s glossy black hair spun in a beautiful circle as she whipped her head around. “You still have the data?!” she exclaimed. “How?! They didn’t take your drive?”

Akane grinned. “I knew… not to bring one,” she replied in a weak voice. “Transmitted to Junpei. He and Sigma… wrote it all down. It’s home.”

In the rearview mirror, Aoi saw Alice’s eyes widen with rare delight. As if she did not know what to do with the rush of energy that came with such an unexpected bit of good news, she banged on the edge of the steering wheel and let out a long shout, brightened by a huge smile. Clover giggled, her round eyes fixed on her commanding officer with awe.

Aoi found he, too, did not know what to do with the huge tumult of emotions turning over in his stomach, tingling through his veins, and buzzing around his head. When he let out a laugh at the sound of Alice’s joy, it felt like something else had rushed out of his chest along with it, something he thought he should keep to himself, but something heavy that felt good to let go. He tried to laugh again, but it was not a wholly joyful sound. Alongside the joy was simmering hatred, dying anger, and overwhelming fear.

Light found his shoulder by the feel of leather and held it firm. “Are you alright, Aoi?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Light?!” Clover recognized something amiss in an instant. “What’s wrong?!”

“It’s nothing. It’s not real,” he grunted. “Aoi, tightly bandage Akane’s arms. Lay her on her back with her knees bent, arms as elevated as possible.”

Aoi could not force himself to move until Akane’s body grew heavier in his shaking arms, succumbing at last to the pull of Soporil and hypovolemia. He wormed himself under her into the middle seat, laying her limp head in his lap. Her body naturally slid into position from there: her feet pressed against the car door on the right, her back settling along the seat beside her brother. Aoi’s hand could barely close over the fabric in his pocket; it took him three tries to produce the makeshift bandages. He tore them along the lengthwise seam to increase the surface area. With trembling hands, he wound the cotton tight around Akane’s forearms, feeling warm blood soak into the tiny stitches. His ear stayed uneasily on the conversation between the Field siblings.

With a soft click, barely audible over the ambient noise of the car, Clover’s seatbelt came undone. She had turned around completely in her seat, one foot raised as if she was about to climb over it.

“Sit down, Clover,” Light ordered through gritted teeth. “Alice is not driving safely. I don’t want any more injured in this car.”

“How do you know I’m not sitting down?!” Clover huffed, but she fell back in her seat. “Just tell me what’s wrong! You’re hurt, aren’t you?!”

“I am completely safe,” Light insisted.

“But you’re hurt! Look, you’re holding your arm!”

Aoi finished a shabby bandaging job. His left hand had started out weak and shaky; now it felt completely numb. The strenuous night had taken its toll on his weary body. There was only so much adrenaline and cortisol he could safely produce in the span of a half-hour. Nonetheless, he felt another rush of nervous energy when a passing streetlight illuminated Light’s face, tight with pain and glistening with sweat. His right hand clasped his left arm just below the elbow.

“Is it malfunctioning?” Clover asked. “Did something damage the artificial nerve center?”

That was what Light had meant by being safe, by his pain not being real. “Will it stop if you take it off?” Aoi asked. “Just take your whole arm off.”

“I don’t…” Light’s good hand started towards the collar of his jacket—now nothing more than a vest—twice before he swept the zipper down. He tried to slide his hand down the collar of his buttoned shirt, reaching towards his left shoulder.

Aoi grabbed Light’s shirt and ran down the buttons faster than his hands wanted to move, exposing smooth, white skin. He ran his thumb along a glowing collarbone as he pulled the shirt off of Light’s shoulder. He was hot, he was soft, and he was painfully human.

Light slipped his hand deep into his shirt. With several simultaneous clicks, a weight sank down his sleeve, an arm detached and abandoned. Aoi lifted a shaking hand to Light’s face—the right; he had given up on expecting anything from his left anymore—and breathed, “Is it okay? Did it stop hurting?”

It was at that moment, the one in which Light bit his lip and shook his head, that Aoi’s supply of adrenaline ran out. He gave into the buildup of stress that had begun to well up in his eyes. He clenched his teeth before the sob that wracked his body could make a noise in his throat. By touch, or perhaps by the quiet gasp, Light knew he was crying. Somehow it was alright that Light knew.

“It’s… phantom pain,” Light said. “Don’t worry about me. Please.”

“Why?” Clover demanded. “Why is it still hurting?!”

Alice veered into the rightward curve of the onramp bringing them to the expressway. Aoi let the inertia take his face to Light’s bare shoulder. With the heat of their skin pressed together, Aoi melted into Light, shaking and biting back his tears. Light crossed his right arm behind Aoi.

“It’s only pain. Everything’s going to be alright,” he murmured, pressing Aoi closer to his warmth. “You, me, Akane, everyone.”

His voice was back to that comforting lull, the one that had always set Aoi at ease.

“Do you know your sister’s blood type?” he asked.

“O, I think,” Aoi mumbled.

“Positive or negative?” asked Light.

Aoi felt his face tighten, and he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said in a squeaking voice.

“Aoi, it’s alright.”

A soft kiss touched Aoi’s temple, gentle and soothing.

“Her blood loss is minor enough that she probably won’t need a transfusion. This is a precaution in the rare event that I’m wrong,” Light said with a smile. “Do you know if you have the same blood type as her?”

“No, I… I’m B. B something, I-I dunno.”

His voice was cracking every other syllable. Light kissed him each time: his cheek, his forehead, his chemically-treated hair. “It’s alright, Aoi,” Light murmured again. “That’s good. Clover has B negative.”

Aoi frowned. “Why does that…?”

“Aoi, are you aware that you’ve been shot in the left arm?”

He did not know whether everything turned quiet because his subtle resonance with Light came to an abrupt end or because his whole world suddenly zoomed in on the awful, searing, burning sensation flaring out from the space between his ulna and his radius just before they created the point of his elbow. There was something there, something alien, something he wanted out now, even if it made a geyser of blood shoot out of his flesh. Warm trickles of blood ran down his skin, sticking to the inside of his jacket as it dried. He could barely see the wound in the darkness, but something deep and dark glistened behind a hole in his sleeve.

A sound had begun leaking out of his open mouth, something too lackluster to be called a scream. As his panic climbed higher, so did his volume and his pitch.

“Shh, shh, you’re alright, Aoi,” Light hushed. “It’s not serious.”

“Tell me where we’re going,” Alice barked over the sound of Aoi trying to strangle his drawn out cry with his uncooperative teeth and tongue. “Do we need a closer hospital?”

“No, the bullet is blocking most of his bleeding,” responded Light. “It’s an extremity, and the blood loss is mi—”

“Wait, Light, how the heck do you know all that?!” Clover demanded. “You can’t—you couldn’t—”

“Holy fuck, I was giving that to you!” Aoi screamed. “You said—phantom pain, you meant I was—”

“Quiet, Aoi, you’re giving away our little secret.”

Now that he had stopped yelling, Aoi could hear his blood rushing through his ears. His pulse was quick, but it had a strange wash to the sound rather than a fierce pounding. His breaths came faster and harder every second.

Clover’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God, Light, you… with Santa?!”

With a ginger touch and slow movements, Light slid Aoi’s jacket from his shoulders and down his left arm. “We’ll elevate this in a moment, but first, let’s bandage to keep the blood from dripping everywhere,” he said. “Perhaps we could use what’s left of my jacket?”

“What’s left?!” Clover repeated.

She smacked a hand onto the interior light switch, snapping a harsh light into Aoi’s eyes, and then she let out a little shriek of despair.

“What happened to your jacket?!” she cried. “Aw, that one looked so good on you…”

“It was tragically destroyed, then applied to a greater cause than fashion,” Light replied. “I’m afraid I’ll have to get rid of it now.”

“Santa, that’s twice!” Clover complained. “That’s two really nice jackets you and your sister ruined!”

“I wasn’t much a fan of the other one, either,” Light mused, shrugging his bony shoulders out of what remained of the bomber jacket.

“No, wait, don’t get that all bloody,” Clover protested. “I think it might make a good vest.”

Light paused. His head made a small twitch, a tell, towards Aoi, who had already thought a lot about how good Light had looked in the modified garment. “She’s right,” he mumbled.

“Oh my God.” Clover was on her knees in the passenger seat, once again ready to jump into the back. “There is something going on between you guys!”

“That’s preposterous, Clover,” Light insisted. “Aoi is simply an impartial connoisseur of fashion. Have you seen his crop top?”

Aoi felt hot air warm his face from the inside before it escaped through his teeth. Clover was giggling; even Alice had cracked a smile. “Fucking wrap this with my fuckin’ crop top, you fucking fuck,” Aoi spat.

“An excellent suggestion. Well then, now that we’ve cleared up any misunderstandings about our relationship, Clover, please turn off the light and sit down,” said Light, “so that I may remove Aoi’s shirt and drape his arm over my shoulders in the backseat of his car.”

Aoi made a high-pitched, exasperated growl that he did not know he was capable of producing, while Clover and Alice burst into a shock of laughter. “Why the fuck d’you hafta make everything a perverted joke?!” he shouted.

“Come now, Aoi, jokes make people feel good,” Light said, his voice dangerously lighthearted. “Of course, a nice, long one that’s hard to get at first is best, but even a short one applied in the right way can still get the job done.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“Easy, dear. Let’s take care of that arm.”

The lights clicked out again. All his anger, all his pain seemed to fizzle away the moment Light called him dear.

The boys worked together, each in possession of only a right hand while the left hung as dead weight, to peel Aoi’s shirt, damp with sweat and Soporil vapors, from his chest. Aoi tried not to squeal when the cloth brushed against his tender wound. Whenever a little sound of pain escaped from the back of his throat, Light leaned in and pressed a quiet kiss to his cheek, setting off a million miniscule fireworks under his skin. His bandaged arm floated up to Light’s shoulder, hooking comfortably around the back of his neck. He touched bare skin.

“D’you wanna, um… put your shirt back?” Aoi mumbled.

“Pot to kettle, dear.” Light slid his right hand up the ridges of Aoi’s spine and down along his shoulder blade and ribs. He came back up holding the collar of Aoi’s leather jacket to drape it over his naked shoulders. “Are you feeling lightheaded at all?”

Aoi’s head fell against Light’s collarbone as the car bumped over a lonely county road. He let it rest there as his right hand wandered to the stiff, cold arm hanging out of Light’s left sleeve. “D’you want this on or off?” he asked.

“I’m sure its battery is almost exhausted, in any case. Let’s leave it.”

With slow fingers, Aoi undid buttons on the cuff of the sleeve, leaving enough room for Light’s slender prosthetic to slide out. He rested the bare arm in Light’s lap, then fumbled to roll the empty sleeve. He felt it when Light’s chest rose but did not fall for a long time. Those breaths became deeper and longer as Aoi pulled the sagging shirt back over his shoulder. As Aoi slowly worked his way up the buttons, Light’s arm grew tight around Aoi’s back, pulling him closer.

Aoi was adjusting the folded sleeve under Light’s residual arm when Light held his lips close to Aoi’s ear and whispered, “I would very much like to go out with you, Aoi Kurashiki.”

The feel of breath against his ear, the sincere longing with which Light had spoken, and those impossible words made Aoi shiver. “Why?” he asked in a creaking voice, because that was all he could think to ask, because it did not make sense that Light Field was sitting here, holding him, liking him.

“That’s always a difficult question,” he said. “If I recall, your answer to me was the ever-so-eloquent ‘fuck if I know’?”

“No, Light, you’re… I dunno if you know this, but… you’re really…”

He faltered before he could say gorgeous, embarrassed by the way it would sound. He considered the word beautiful, but that was too vague and too heavy to say aloud.

“Nice. To look at.”

Nailed it.

Aoi could feel Light’s lips sag at the corners against his temple. “I’m flattered, though I can’t say I seek the same asset in my partners.”

“Shame. I’m fuckin’ gorgeous,” mumbled Aoi, because of course he could say the word now.

“Oh, I’m sure.” Light’s voice rumbled in his throat. Then, in a voice softer than a whisper, he said, “You’re very sweet, Aoi.”

“Am not,” Aoi snapped back before the words settled into his body and turned all of his muscles off. His jacket slid off of his immobilized shoulders again.

“I assure you, you are. You just don’t like to show it.” After tugging the jacket back into place, Light drew lazy circles with his fingers between Aoi’s shoulder blades. “Which is, I hope, the reason you can’t bring yourself to tell me why you like me, outside of physical attraction.”

“H-hey, that’s not why I—it’s…”

Aoi trailed off. He pulled his face back from Light’s to get a better look at the man for whom he had fallen so sharply and steeply. His eyes had fluttered half-open, his tantalizing lips pulled into an inquisitive frown. There were the looks, of course, and also the intellect and sharp wit that made for smart conversation, but listing those superficial qualities left an inscrutable hollow underneath the surface. What it came down to was that Aoi liked Light for how much like Light he was.

“I dunno, I can’t…”

“I know. I can’t, either.”

He wondered if, even in blindness, Light could feel the pressure of their eye contact, if he also heard hungry voices from deep in his soul chanting louder than the unintelligible chatter of anxiety to kiss that boy, kiss him, kiss him right now. Aoi closed his eyes and experienced that exhilarating pressure in new ways: in the sounds of someone else breathing close enough to hear, in the scent that smelled like the last kiss had tasted, in the radiated heat between their faces. It was inevitable that their lips would meet again in that dark, quiet moment.