Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hanamura Yosuke is born with half a song stuck in his head.

He isn’t special; almost every single person in the world is born with a Soul Song. Some are platonic, some are romantic, some are somewhere in between. Loud and bold and intense, sweet and soft and warm; there is every sort of music imaginable, but none of them are complete.

They teach the story in school. “The soul is made of music,” the teacher tells the class one day when Yosuke is about five or six. “And each person has half or part of a special Song that only they and their destined partner know. No one else can replicate it, because nobody is born with all the parts – you have to find the people that know the rest of it to make the melody into a full Song.”

It’s a beautiful thought, really – the idea that somewhere out there is a person that’s meant for him exclusively, someone that he’s meant for, too, that the both of them are tailor made for one another in the most cosmically profound way possible.

Yosuke knows his song is romantic. He knows in a way he cannot explain, just like no one can explain just how they know the missing piece of their Song when they hear it. The tune in his head is slow and pretty, with a bittersweet tint of nostalgia and longing, but happy and hopeful at the same time. It sounds like a hard-won love, like coming home and falling into someone’s arms after at the end of a golden summer day. He doesn’t know how he knows all of this, but he does, and from the time he’s little, Yosuke wants nothing more than to find the other half of himself.

He is eight when he asks his parents to get him a guitar. At first they refuse, but after several weeks of begging and pleading they settle on a compromise; if he can save up the money to get one for himself, then his parents will pay for lessons. Yosuke excitedly agrees. He hoards his allowance, his birthday money, does odd jobs for his mom and for neighbors around the apartment complex where they live. He’s too young still to get a job, but he does what he can, and saves and saves and saves until eventually he has enough to walk into the music store downtown and buy a simple acoustic six-string. It’s the greatest day of this little life.

His parents follow through on their half of the bargain – likely because they see how serious he is about the whole guitar thing now that he’s bought one all by himself. It’s slow going, like anything worth putting time and effort into, but Yosuke doesn’t mind in the least. He would rather take his time and make it good, than rush though and make something half-assed.

After all, one day in the not-so-distant future, he’s going to put his Song out there for the whole world to hear, so that wherever she is, his soul mate knows it’s for her. It absolutely, absolutely cannot be anything less than perfect.

So Yosuke practices. He practices and he learns and he listens, wondering if maybe someone has already put something out there for him to respond to. As he moves from child into preteen and becomes more versed in the internet, he scours forums, specialty sites, anything that he can get into at his age that will let him listen to the Songs that people have put up. He knows it’s a long shot, that there are so many people out there, so many Songs, that it’ll take him eons to get through them all, but he keeps going. Just in case. Just in case.

When he turns sixteen he signs up for his own account on every single free site he can and saves up once again to buy himself a small microphone. He plays his Song over and over and over again to himself in his bedroom, getting it just right, getting it perfect as he waits to be able to record it.

But then his parents tell him that they’re moving.

At first, Yosuke doesn’t quite know what to think. Moving isn’t bad, per se, but he likes where they are. The city is full of people, is accessible; he has a better chance of meeting his soul mate in a place like the city than he would somewhere else. If she isn’t here with him like he likes to imagine – somewhere on the other side of the subway tracks from him as he goes out with friends to the arcade, or sitting at a lonely table inside a café as he passes by the window outside – then he at least has the ability to get to her. This place is connected to everything; if he leaves now, then how far do his odds drop?

He nearly has a heart attack when they tell him where they’re moving to.

Nowhere. Absolutely fucking nowhere is where they’re moving to. He looks it up online, discovers that Inaba is a tiny, god-forsaken little dollop of rural nothingness hours and hours away from where he is now. He can’t breathe. How is he supposed to find his other half in a place like that? There’s no way. Even if she hears his Song then there’s the very real possibility that they won’t be able to meet, not when he’s stuck out in no man’s land with nothing but mountains and silence.

His microphone comes in just before they finish packing, but he doesn’t have a chance to record his Song before his family leaves. Maybe, he tells himself in an attempt to keep his heart from sinking, maybe this will turn out okay in the end. Maybe she’ll be there instead of in the city.

The first few months in Inaba are utter hell. His family is blamed for the sudden decline in sales throughout the shopping district, which brands him as a monster from the very first day. He tries, he really does; he goes to work under his dad and keeps a smile on his face when in view of other people, keeping his abject misery hidden until he can retreat back to his bedroom. He lets the comments, aimed like barbs at his throat, slide off his shoulders, pretends not to hear what other people say behind his back. He makes himself into a caricature, sunny smiles and unfailingly jovial, and all the while tries not to feel himself sink lower and lower as the weeks pass and he stays stagnant without even so much as a friend.

There are a few people that are kinder to him – two of the boys in the sports clubs, a brash, tom-boyish girl in his class that likes to aim punches at his head sometimes. And then there’s Saki-senpai.

Saki-senpai is soft, sweet, friendly to him in a way that seems easy and natural. He basks in her presence like a flower in the sunlight and, for a while, he wonders if maybe she could be his soul mate. Her voice when she speaks to him, a tired laugh in her words, sounds like she could be made of the same chords as his Song. He doesn’t know what hers sounds like, never seems to get the chance to ask or the luck of overhearing her humming it to herself like he’d always pictured happening. He doesn’t mind, though. He thinks of he microphone still packed away in this closet at home, of his guitar, still in its case in the corner by his bed, and thinks about possibly recording his Song after all. Maybe he can give it to her on a CD after work one day, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll catch him outside before a shift the day after and tell him with a happy smile that she’s heard him loud and clear.

He lets the plan slowly build inside his mind, thinking of how he can set up his desk upstairs to accommodate a small recoding station. He still has a few more boxes to unpack (he’s always been slow to put stuff away when it wasn’t in a work situation), so he needs to finish doing that before he has room to start on this, but what he can do is practice. He goes home from school or from work and for a month straight he familiarizes himself with his instrument and re-teaches himself the movements of his hands. He doesn’t need to remember the tune itself, ingrained permanently as it is into his very soul.

Seta Souji moves to Inaba at the start of the next term and almost immediately Yosuke is intrigued. Seta is quiet, mysterious, and right away his welcome to the town is a million times more positive than Yosuke’s had been. Yosuke can kind of see why, too; Seta is new, and therefore gossip-worthy, but because he’s not tied to Junes and the subsequent drama surrounding the shopping district, he’s free game to be viewed with excitement, in a positive light. (It doesn’t help that Seta is handsome in a storybook, ethereal kind of way, but Yosuke would never admit that in a hundred years.)

He wants to hate him, wants to be jealous of him, but as much as Yosuke is bitter about the vast difference in the way Inaba treats their newest hyperfixation vs. the way they’ve been treating him, Yosuke finds he just… can’t. He can’t dislike the new kid. Seta has been shipped out here with no say in the matter, just like Yosuke had been, so it’s not really his fault that he’s here. And honestly, if Yosuke looks hard enough, just past that neutral expression that Seta wears, Yosuke thinks he can see just the tiniest hint of discomfort. Maybe even loneliness.

It’s hard to hate the guy when he reminds Yosuke too much of himself.

Yosuke goes home that afternoon wondering if he has a chance of getting a new friend out of this if he plays his cards right, since Seta doesn’t know him as the “Prince of Junes.” Besides, what with them both being unwillingly transferred from their home in the city, Yosuke figures he Seta could use a kindred spirit. He heads for his room at the end of the day with plans to talk to the guy at school in the morning. Maybe say hello, offer to show him around town.

He’s busy digging through the boxes still stacked in his closet when midnight hits without him knowing it. He’d completely forgotten about the bullshit Midnight Channel rumor that Satonaka had told him until his TV cuts on by itself and bathes his bedroom in an eerie yellow glow. He watches, transfixed – because seriously? How can this be real? – as through the flickering static there comes the image of a girl. Soft and tired, with rounded, delicate features; Yosuke would know Saki-senpai’s face anywhere.

He feels like his heart is about to explode.

The TV clicks back off again and the room goes dim once more. Yosuke stays where he is, watching the dark television screen with the after image of his soul mate in his eyes.

He doesn’t get to talk to Saki-senpai much the next day, however, as she’s just coming off her break when he spots her while up in the food court with Seta and Satonaka. (He’d gotten his wish to hang out with the new kid, at least, though not without having made a fool of himself for the second time in front of him by getting stuck in a trashcan. Still, Seta had yet to seem like he was holding it over Yosuke’s head, so the gleam of hope hasn’t faded just yet.) Sadly, Saki-senpai seems too tired, to distracted to talk, so as much as Yosuke wants to ask her if she’d watched the Midnight Channel, too, if she’d seen him, too, he holds off. There’s always the next day, after all. Plus, he still needs to play his Song for her, so maybe it’s better that he wait for a little bit longer. Now that he knows who his soul mate is, he can take his time and do it right.

Except he can’t. Because Saki-senpai’s body is found dangling above the town not even a full day later and Yosuke feels the world crumbling out from underneath him.

So close. He’d been so close to her; he’d been waiting his entire life to meet her, to hear what their combined Soul Song would sound like once it was complete. But even having suspected it was her, having had it confirmed in a roundabout way and knowing it was her, he’d taken too long and now she’s gone. He should have talked to her sooner, should have played his half of their Song for her sooner. Maybe then he could have stopped her death.

Yosuke doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know how to bring himself off of autopilot because he’s too numb, too scared of what he’ll feel when he isn’t numb anymore. So in a blind effort to do something, to keep himself focused so that the numbness stays and he pain stays away, he does the only thing he can possibly think to do: he ropes Seta into going back into the TV with him to see if they can settle the score.

Long afterwards, when Yosuke is exhausted and sore and there’s a new voice whispering in the back of his skull, he catches up to Seta – to Souji – and shakes his hand as equals. “I’m counting on you, Partner,” he says, and there is the funniest little click inside his heart that almost feels like someone has run their hands across a piano’s keys in an ascending scale.

He tries not to think about the way it makes his whole body shiver.

The next few months are a like a fever dream. Yosuke throws himself into their cause, cutting through dungeon after dungeon, standing at Souji’s side, defiant in the faces of his new friends’ shadows. It’s exhilarating, empowering, and Yosuke can feel the pain in his chest slowly growing scar tissue with each and every person that gets added to their group.

He misses Saki-senpai. He misses her and the chance that they never got to have, but there is also something there that Yosuke is a little afraid to look at too closely. He misses her, wishes he could have known her as his soul mate, but the more time that goes by he realizes that maybe, horribly, he misses the concept of her, of what they could have been and what he’ll never have now, more than he does her. They’d never had the time to be more than what they were, and he hates to admit it to himself but he’s seen what happens when he keeps things bottled up and denies them.

Sometimes, after a particularly draining dungeon crawl, Yosuke lies in bed and stares up at the ceiling and listens to the song still playing slow and pretty in his soul. He lets himself think about Saki-senpai as much as he can without also letting in that tearing sensation of loss, and finds that, while the wound is still fresh, it no longer bleeds. It hurts more to think that he doesn’t miss her as much as he thinks he should, than it does to think about her on her own.

He thinks about his future, a life without the hope of one day making his Song whole, and that’s when the ache in his lungs starts to take hold – like he’s drowning on dry land.

What’s worse is that his mind immediately jumps to a different face, a different set of silvery eyes to kick him back out of his suffocation. He doesn’t know if he’s just substituting his best friend as a source of comfort or what, but it tangles him up inside in a way he cannot name. Yosuke always goes to sleep on those nights with a tugging at his heart that he tells himself must be grief.

They fight on. With each person rescued the IT gains a new member, and Yosuke starts to feel damn near invincible. He holds the feeling close to his chest for as long as he is able because for the first time in his life he is useful, he is powerful. The more he fights the more he wonders if Saki-senpai would be proud of him for all the good the Investigation Team is doing. He hopes she is, wherever she might be now. He knows what she thought of him; he still remembers the echoing words of her Shadow left over in the gloom of the twisted liquor store. He knows that she didn’t like him much – but it’s alright. It’s alright because Yosuke can still mourn for her, can mourn for what they might have been to one another; despite his qualms about his own emotions, he knows he did genuinely care for her. Maybe it’s not as much as he wishes it were, but it’s still there.

So her words of scorn don’t deter him. It hurts, yes, knowing her true feelings, but it isn’t what’s important right now. Not even when his mind takes a sharp curve and reminds him that he might have been able to change her opinion of him if he’d just told her sooner; just like he might have been able to prevent her death.

But right now it doesn’t matter. The past can’t be changed; all he can do at the moment is try and shape the future one kidnapping victim at a time. Maybe it will be enough to earn her forgiveness one day, even if he cannot earn his own.

Time continues to pass as if nothing has happened, creeping along and yet flying at the same time. Soon it’s the end of summer, then fall, and suddenly winter is upon them and the Investigation Team is up to eight members. One murderer is already behind bars. It isn’t Saki-senpai’s murderer, but it’s still a murderer, which is confirmation that what they’re doing, what Yosuke is doing, is good.

But like everything else in his life, doing good just isn’t good enough.

November takes Yosuke’s newfound confidence, his small sense of pre-peace, and smashes it against the ground like it’s made of hollow glass. He watches, utterly helpless, as his best friend’s entire world is burned to ashes in the span of a single evening – Nanako is kidnapped, Dojima is hospitalized, and Souji looks like he’s one step away from breaking. Yosuke tries to tell himself it will be okay, that they’ll save her just like they did the others, but he’s become so used to operating under Souji’s command that he feels off-balance now that their unshakable leader is cracking at the edges. He doesn’t even know what to do to help him as a friend except to stay by his side and power through the dungeon as quickly as possible.

It takes days too long. As adept at fighting as they all are, they’re still human and cannot possibly rescue Nanako in one go. So they do what they can until they can’t, and then Yosuke is left to watch as Souji shuts himself entirely down once the rest of the team has crossed back over into the real world. He doesn’t know how to help; once again, Yosuke feels like he’s losing something, only this time he’s watching it happen in front of him in slow motion and he can’t seem to move quick enough to stop it. (He has nightmares of finding Saki-senpai’s body on a power line, which somehow become nightmares of Souji’s eyes, dead inside and blank, staring back at him as he hangs – empty and gone, even with his heart still beating. Yosuke wakes with constricting lungs, Souji and Saki-senpai’s faces superimposed on one another until he can’t be sure who he’s just dreamt about losing.)

Nanako dies.

Yosuke holds his best friend close as Souji cries on his shoulder.

He stays the night with Souji so that the other boy doesn’t have to be alone and tries to stuff down the overwhelming guilt at having failed yet again to save someone he cares about, someone his partner cares about. It keeps him awake long after Souji has finally cried himself into an exhausted sleep.

Not even the pretty Song inside him can drown it out.

Chapter Text

They chase Adachi into Magatsu Inaba with all the fury and pain of those that have known loss. He mocks them, taunts them, running further and further into the depths of his own depravity with a cackling laugh and a manic smile.

“Bitches,” he calls the dead; “sluts! Whores!”

Yosuke didn’t think he was capable of actively wanting another person dead until now.

They pursue him into the deepest pits of the twisted, ruined reflection of their town – their home – until there is nowhere left for him to go and all that’s left to him is to stand and face their wrath. But even then he doesn’t stop smiling. He doesn’t stop mocking them, doesn’t stop bemoaning his own lack of existence and blaming the world for everything; instead, Adachi pulls a blood-colored, toxic, mutated version of Souji’s Izanagi from his mind and sets the monster on them.

Yosuke desperately wants the first hit. He wants to summon Susano-o and call up a windstorm with enough might to tear the bastard to pieces. He wants Adachi begging and bleeding, pleading for his life the way Saki-senpai must have done. Yosuke wants Adachi to suffer like his soul mate did – after all, this is the man that took her away from him, stole their chance together and destroyed it. Yosuke wants Adachi to pay. Even if it’s not entirely for Saki-senpai anymore, because Yosuke knows that no amount of revenge or justice or bid for forgiveness will ever bring her back. He knows that once this is all over, he will have to continue on, carrying her memory along with the knowledge that his Song will forever be incomplete. No, that first shot would be for him.

But he can’t take it.

At the last moment, just before he calls Susano-o into action and channels all of his anger and hatred and misery into a single, obliterating spell, he glances over at the boy beside him and feels his magic freeze.

Souji stands low to the ground in his battle stance, his teeth bared in an abhorrent snarl. His knuckles are white against the handle of his sword, fingers squeezing so tightly that they cause his hands to tremble. There is anguish in his posture, grief and fresh sorrow panted across his face and in the set of his jaw; Yosuke remembers the way his partner’s shoulders had felt shaking beneath his hands. He remembers the tear tracks staining his cheeks, carving like knives into the grooves of his face.

Saki-senpai is dead.

She’d died back in April, gone and buried months ago with the oozing, gaping wound left behind now healed into a dull, perpetual ache. Yosuke has had his time to mourn for her. As much as he wishes it were different, she hadn’t been part of his life the way she’d been part of his soul. But Souji…

Souji is still mourning. Souji is awash with agony and new anger, his loss still fresh and much, much deeper than Yosuke’s is in the long run. Yosuke weeps for the loss of potential, for the loss of a happy future – but he weeps for a girl no more. It’s shameful to admit it to himself, but he has to. For Souji’s sake.

Whereas Yosuke mourns what could have been and what will now never be, Souji mourns for a piece of his shattered heart – a shard that had been unequivocally real and unendingly deep. Adachi deserves to die for what he’s done – but as Souji glances over to meet Yosuke’s eyes, to silently nod for Yosuke to land the first blow, Yosuke realizes that he doesn’t have the right to decide. He shakes his head and steps down, motioning for his partner to strike in his place.

This is no longer about Yosuke’s selfish need to apologize to a dead girl that had never liked him back; it’s about making a murderer pay for all the lives he’d brought to an end.

Yosuke shakes his head.

You do it, he says without words. This one isn’t mine anymore; it belongs to you.

Souji watches him with a grey, empty gaze, blinking salt and ozone and desperate, agonized rage as he gives Yosuke one last chance to change his mind.

Yosuke looks his partner dead in the eyes and takes a step backwards, standing down from his position with a decisive nod.

Souji sucks in a shivering breath.

With a cry of utter desolation, their Leader surges forward with gleaming sword raised high. He summons Izanagi mid stride – pure and untainted by the blood saturating Adachi’s wretched hands – as he digs his shoes into the crumbling earth and pushes himself closer to where their enemy stands laughing at them. There is a crackle, a rising wave of hyper-charged air that stands the hairs on Yosuke’s arms upright, before the sky splits open with a righteous ‘BOOM!’ and Izanagi’s lightning cleaves through the world around them.

The storm rages as they battle on, illuminating the sky with residual bursts of light – thunder rattling the horizon in a tone so bitter and harsh that, for just a moment, Yosuke thinks maybe it isn’t thunder at all, but rather the sound of shrieking from deep inside his partner’s soul.

It rends them all, but Adachi finally goes down; Yosuke feels a weight inside himself shift and begin to fall away.

But their victory is temporary. There is no time for Yosuke to reflect on the feeling of redemption, no time to search for Souji’s eyes beneath the fall of his moonlight-tinted hair now speckled with red. There is no time to lick their wounds or to even take a breath once their foe is on the ground, because as soon as Adachi falls, he is speaking yet again, another voice using Adachi’s body like a puppet and sucking in the air around them all so that it almost hurts to breathe.

The earth turns to bubbling muck, tar-like and black, and from it, Ameno-sagiri rises from the fog in a tide of apathy and shadowy fire – a single, soulless eyeball glowing bright against the crimson skyline.

Silently, Yosuke looks to his partner once again and finds that Souji is already looking at him. There is steel there, a wall of frozen, hardened ire. Not yet, his eyes say; we aren’t done yet. He jerks his chin towards where their final nemesis floats ominously above the world like a poisoned star.

Yosuke grits his teeth against the wash of unnamable emotions, some new and some still steeped in older hurts, and strengths his grip on his kunai. He leaps, his Soul Song ringing like a war cry in his ears, and this time he allows himself to deal the first blow.

Hours later, battered and emotionally drained, the team emerges from the television, dragging Adachi’s unconscious form with them as they file out one by one in a fatigued, triumphant mess. Souji’s cell phone buzzes in his pocket as his feet touch down on the shining tiles. He fishes it out like it’s made of lead and flips it open to find a myriad of missed calls from the hospital. Yosuke watches as Souji seems to sink inward, the last of the color draining from his face, and steps off to the side to listen to the voicemails he’s been left.

Yosuke reaches into whatever remains of his mental capacity and drags up the last of his ability to lead. He sends the others on ahead to the police station with Adachi’s limp body in tow, promising to text them all as soon as he knows what’s going on. He pretends to watch them go but keeps an eye on his partner as Souji stands away from him with a mask of careful calm glued over his features. It doesn’t fool Yosuke, though; he’s grown too accustomed to seeing, to noticing, and he can tell that there are spidery cracks in the façade that Souji is holding so desperately in place.

It isn’t until Souji turns back around with the glimmer of moisture in his eyes and tells him that Nanako is somehow alive that Yosuke allows his lungs to breathe. He’s at his partner’s side again in and instant, throwing an arm around Souji’s shoulders as the other boy sags against him. He props Souji up when his knees seem to buckle, leaning his weight into Yosuke’s body like Yosuke is all there is. His breathing quickens, lips parting as he swallows dry sobs before they can slip past his defenses and spill from his eyes. His entire body trembles in a mixture of utter exhaustion and relief, a release of all the tension and leftover emotions he’d been too focused on surviving to properly deal with up until now.

And Yosuke feels all of it. He can feel the way Souji shakes against him, can feel the stuttering rise and fall of his chest as he tries to keep his breathing under control. He feels the slow but steady drag towards the floor as more and more of Souji’s strength leaves him. He also feels a thrumming somewhere deep inside his own soul – like a sad, keening note has faded out of existence to be replaced by something soft and soothing instead. Flecks of silver against the black and white of a piano’s keys; a minor key shifting into tentative major.

There is a part of him, one very deep below the surface in a place filled with shadows and bile that wants to be envious. That ugly part of him wants to be angry, to drive him to slice his kunai though a television screen and shout about how unfair it is that Souji got his loved one back and Yosuke didn’t. It tells him he should want to find the ruins of Ameno-Sagiri down in the fog and the mud and revive it somehow, demand an answer as to why his soul mate is still gone while Nanako gets to live.

It wants him feel this way, makes him think that maybe he should. But he doesn’t.

All that Yosuke feels is bone-deep relief, gratitude to whatever god or deity might have been on their side tonight, and tired, worn-down joy that at least Souji gets to keep that shard of his heart after all.

And even on a more down-to-earth level, Yosuke is just really glad that Nanako-chan is okay. The reality of the situation is that Yosuke cannot feel bad for Nanako’s survival when he knows her death would have weight heavier on his shoulders than even Saki-senpai’s; he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop Saki-senpai’s demise, he’d been too weak. Nanako, however, had been right there in front of them. Had she stayed dead forever, then there would have been no chance at redemption, no excuse. He would have blamed himself until the day he’d died if Nanako had been permanently gone. He knows this, because he’d been all too prepared to do so the moment her heart monitor had flat lined and that awful, world-ending sound had overpowered even the strongest notes of Song inside his mind.

He doesn’t even want to imagine what would have happened to Souji.

Souji had already been destroyed by Nanako’s death. He’d hated himself enough for letting her get hurt, for “not getting there soon enough,” and any scenario that ended in Nanako leaving them for good, being gone for good, is one that Yosuke is pretty sure would also have ended with Souji disappearing behind a mask.

Yosuke doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks he might have come dangerously close to losing his best friend tonight. Souji might not have resorted to taking his own life, but Yosuke had seen how empty his partner’s eyes had been just after she’d died, and he cannot help the cold, gnawing feeling that a crucial piece of Souji himself had very nearly followed her. There are ways to be dead while the heart still beats, after all. Sometimes, that living death is almost worse.

But no.

Souji is still alive against him, still breathing, still there behind his own eyes, and Yosuke feels like the wind has been knocked out of him, chest tight and aching like he wants to break down crying in desperate joy because his friend is still here. It’s enough. It’ll be enough.

Yosuke shifts so that his arm is around Souji’s waist where he can support him under his ribs. He brings Souji’s arm up over his shoulders and wraps his fingers over Souji’s wrist to keep him from sliding away. (Souji smells like sweat and blood, ozone and ashes, but below the scents of battle there is one of cold, clear water and the fresh new grass of greenest spring. Something in Yosuke’s soul trills.)

To his partner, out loud, he says, “Let’s get you home.”

To Saki-senpai, in his head and in his heart, he says, “I’m sorry.”

He takes a deep breath, and lets it out.

Yosuke closes up the box that had held all of his affection for Saki-senpai in the days that follow, and tucks it away into a private corner of his heart. It still stings sometimes, and he acknowledges that his future is never going to be the way he’d pictured it when he was little. All that time spent as a child, wishing, wanting, waiting – all of it has come to nothing in the end. He has no soul mate now, no one to play his Song for. But, strangely, it’s alright. He regrets the loss of a happily ever after, regrets that he will never be able to hear the finished piece as he and Saki-senpai’s Soul Songs combine into one – and he lets himself regret without shame. However. He and Saki-senpai had never even started, he’d never gotten to hear what her music sounded like; he thinks maybe, funnily, it might have been harder to have lost her after they’d synched up. He thinks he might have got off even just a little bit easily having never heard her at all.

It leaves a strange taste in his mouth to think it, but because he doesn’t know what he’s missed, he wonders if he’s lucky. It might have been too hard to carry on living had he been given a taste of their Song made whole only to have it snatched away again soon after.

He wonders if he should feel guilty, and he does, but probably not in the way he should. He decides just to let it be. It won’t do anyone any good to dwell on “what if’s”.

(A week after Adachi is sentenced, Yosuke puts his guitar back into its case.)

Yosuke puts his focus into trying to adapt now that the investigations are over and he has the time to breathe. It’s surreal, readjusting his life to fit with his new reality, but he finds it surprisingly much smoother than expected. It isn’t exactly easy or fun, because the pain is still there – dulled and quiet, but definitely there – but there are more good days than bad and he isn’t going to beat himself up over it if he can help it.

Souji, however, is a slightly different story. He seems to be handling the end to the cases, the newfound free time and lowered panic levels, but there is still something… off about Yosuke’s partner that he isn’t sure how to pick apart. He acts normal enough at school, when they hang out together, when he interacts with other people, but there’s an odd tension to his shoulders, lines around his eyes that shouldn’t be there. Yosuke would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried.

The strangeness persists well though the last week or so of December without so much as hinting that it’s on the way out. Yosuke tries to subtly bring it up to Souji a couple of times, but he never gets a straight answer. Souji just shrugs it off as being tired or trying to stave off burn-out now that they don’t have to fight monsters anymore and he can finally drop his frantic “go-go-go” mentality. Which, to be fair, are both valid reasons for him to be the way he currently is, but Yosuke can tell by the dimness in Souji’s eyes that they aren’t the real reasons. He doesn’t call his friend out on it, though, because he honestly has no idea how; instead, he catalogues his partner’s reactions and watches the way Souji always seems to fade around the edges – just slightly – whenever Yosuke says he can’t hang out after school. Or when they’ve been hanging out and Yosuke has to go home. Really, any time Souji is alone he seems to want to be with someone, and any time he can’t be he almost… shuts down.

Yosuke has seen him meandering around the shopping district sometimes, too, or the riverbank, or just anywhere in town that’s worth meandering. It’s like he’s aimless. Lost in the fog that still hasn’t entirely cleared.

Yosuke suspects it might be more than that.

He finally gets an answer to his questions one day in late December, just a few days before Christmas and the start of break. He’s already declined Souji’s request to grab a late lunch in town, stating that he has go get ready for work. It isn’t lie at the time; he’d been asked the night before to come cover someone else’s shift until evening. However, much to his luck, right as he’s getting ready to head back home to change, he gets a call from his dad. The other employee had called in to say they could make their shift after all, and now Yosuke has an evening all to himself.

Or with Souji.

Elated at his unexpected fortune, Yosuke heads back inside the school to see if his partner is still there. He doesn’t find him in the classroom, the library, or the roof, and texting his cell phone yields no results. He’s about to give up and make his way back out to head for home after all when he passes by Kou near the first floor stairs, who tells him in another stroke of blind luck that Souji had been heading for the practice building that last that Kou had seen. Thanking him, Yosuke jogs off in the direction he’d been pointed.

Walking down the outside corridor and into the practice building feels almost like Yosuke has stepped through a gate of some kind, and into a liminal space. The first thing he notices is the silence. It’s abnormally quiet in the building suddenly, which is wholly bizarre considering it’s not yet late enough for the last of the lollygaggers to have filed out yet. Yosuke isn’t in any clubs, but he’s pretty sure there should be at least a few people still milling around.

But apparently he’s wrong, because the further into the building he walks, the more eerily empty it looks and sounds to be. It’s almost enough to make him nervous. He’s contemplating texting Souji again to see if the other boy will respond this time, when Yosuke feels the world stop turning.

He senses it first – like someone has plucked a string inside him, letting it echo through his bones like ripples on the surface of a lake. It’s warm, ringing, a long exhale after holding his breath for far too long and suddenly it feels like he’s been drowning all his life and for the very first time he knows what it’s like to breathe! Frantic for reasons he can’t explain, he whips his head around, searching for something he doesn’t think he can name. He turns towards the end of the hall and the plucked string in his soul tugs at him, pulls him forward, ringing all the while like an orchestra getting all of their instruments into tune before a symphony. Building anticipation, longing, yearning knots hot and inescapable in his ribs and, heart racing, he moves his body towards the where the feeling is getting stronger.

And then he hears it.

Soft and slow and pretty, the sound of someone playing piano reaches him from behind the mostly-closed door at the end of the hallway. It sounds like romance, like a hard-won love at the end of summer – full of hope and bittersweet nostalgia and promises of happy memories yet to be made.

He hears it, and his soul ignites.

Yosuke would know that music anywhere, would be able to recognize it anywhere, even though he’s never heard it in person before. It’s achingly familiar in its foreignness, like the final piece that fills the last gaping hole in a puzzle – he knows what it is without needed to even check: someone is playing the other half of his Soul Song.

It shouldn’t be possible, it can’t be possible; Saki-senpai is dead and buried and no one in the world could have known what the combined movements of their Song would have sounded like. But there it is. It’s there and it calls to Yosuke’s very being like someone has whispered his name to guide him safely through the dark.

Home.

Yosuke feels as though he’s moving through water, sluggish despite the adrenaline electrifying his veins and making his heart pound as if he is a drum. He follows the rhythm of his breathing and makes his way to the end of the hall in daze. The music trails off for a moment, pauses, then starts back up again like it’s a skipping CD looped back to the beginning of the piece because the rest is unplayable.

I know it! his soul sobs; I know the rest of it! Let me play it with you!

Yosuke reaches the door after what feels like an eternity and rests his forehead against the frame. He closes his eyes and listens, listens with every part of his existence and allows the feeling of home to wash over him. He thought he’d never hear it, thought he’d never get the chance to play it back, finished and complete and whole in a way that Yosuke had feared he’d never get to be. He swallows back the taste of tears and concentrates on synching up his breath with the music to keep himself from crying.

The music stops again, the pause much longer than the first. Yosuke nearly chokes on the sudden lump of fear that lodges itself in his throat. No, keep going! Please keep going!

It does a heavy second later, but it’s wrong. It’s sadder and slower, only the right hand playing the melody this time, without the left to accompany it and it positively wrenches at Yosuke’s heart. It isn’t meant to be played that way, he knows. His Song, their Song should be played with hope and summer light, not melancholy. He tears himself away from where he’s leaning and, without thinking, he sticks his hand through the space in the door and slides it open.

The music abruptly stops.

Yosuke feels the breath leave his lungs. Seated on the piano bench, starting back at him with wide, startled grey eyes is Souji.

He sits there completely motionless, one hand still on the piano keys, lips slightly parted in surprise as he watches Yosuke standing rigid in the doorway. Yosuke, for his part, simply watches him back.

Something slides into place inside Yosuke’s mind. You, his soul calls. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you. He wants to rush forward, to throw himself at his partner, his missing other half, and press their hearts together so that they beat in perfect time. There is elation and want and love spilling out and over the sides of his heart and as time slows to a perfect stop he knows without a doubt that he’d been wrong before, that it could never, never have been anyone but Souji.

Souji with his quiet voice and clam demeanor, hands calloused from gripping a sword with ferocious precision but gentle as they pet the cats at the riverbank, ruffle Nanako’s hair, alight on Yosuke’s shoulders. Souji had come into his life like the hint of clear skies after a devastating rainstorm, bringing hope and light back into his lonely existence when Yosuke thought he’d lost everything. It was Souji that helped him through the pain of Saki-senpai’s death, Souji that had faced down Yosuke’s Shadow for him and still stayed by his side after seeing all the ugliness underneath. All this time, it’s been Souji that kept Yosuke going, kept him strong, and Yosuke belatedly realizes that the Song that Souji had been playing on the piano, soft and sweet, hadn’t been the end of Yosuke’s own, but the start. Souji’s half of the Song isn’t a completion of Yosuke’s, the final notes to echo after his in answer – they are the opening to the piece, the question to Yosuke’s eager reply, and it makes sense in a way that nothing else ever has or ever will again.

Because Yosuke’s life was always going to begin with Souji.

His partner exhales radiance. “Yosuke?” he breathes, and from Souji’s lips it sounds like peace. Something like hope, like want, lights up behind that liquid-silver gaze as Souji continues to stare at him, and Yosuke can see the burgeoning understanding beginning to take root.

And Yosuke, dumb-fuck that he is, absolutely panics.

He wasn’t ready for any of this, doesn’t know how to react or what to say. Up until this point, Yosuke had been completely convinced that he’d never get to be in this position, where he’d be faced with his soul mate out of nowhere in an empty music room. He isn’t prepared, hadn’t thought he’d need to be prepared; it’s been ages since he last picked up his guitar, since he’d resigned himself to never needing to play his Song again. He can’t respond now, not in the way he needs to, not when it can’t be perfect like it always should have been. He isn’t ready.

He forces his face into a semblance of casual pleasantness and prays that Souji can’t see the anxiety in his eyes from halfway across the room. His mouth forms a greeting, an, “Oh hey, Partner, there you are!” A plastic smile stretches at his mouth and it feels like razors on his cheeks. “I was wondering where you went.”

The furrowing of Souji’s brow cuts into him like his own kunai. Confusion, nervousness, things that look out of place on his soul mate’s features – they flit across Souji’s face and meld together into an expression that Yosuke wishes he were brave enough, good enough to brush away. “What are you doing here?” is what slips from Souji’s tongue, wary and unsure, tinted with something Yosuke cannot recognize. The light of hope seems to flicker behind his eyes.

Yosuke crawls to the bottom of the hole he’s begun to dig for himself and sinks his fingers in to dig even deeper. He tells Souji his shift has been filled, that he’s free after all, lets the shallow words fill the silence as he buries the ones he aches to say instead.

You’re my soul mate, becomes: “I didn’t know you could play.”

I finally found you, becomes: “You’re really good.”

I missed you so much, becomes: “Did you write that yourself?”

And each one carves a bleeding line across Yosuke’s heart.

Souji’s eyes grow dim as Yosuke babbles, the light and the hope fading into empty cold until they snuff out entirely. “Oh…” his lungs whisper in a sound like the dying gasp of joy. Grey eyes, now hollow and dejected, look down and away from where Yosuke stands propped against the doorframe, keeping himself upright because his body wants to crumble. Souji turns his gaze towards the piano and hunches over on himself like he did that horrible night in the hospital so many weeks ago, when he had watched his little sister turn silent and still.

His hand ghosts over the keys but presses none of them, and slowly he brings it to his lap to curl around his own waist. “…It’s not finished yet,” is the only sound he makes.

Yosuke feels his soul crying. Yes, it urges, yes it is; I’m here, I’m right here!

But he doesn’t say it. He keeps his mouth tightly shut and cages the wailing in his heart at the blank, defeated look on his partner’s face. He swallows, and it feels like gravel in his throat. He croaks out another question – he doesn’t even hear what it is.

But Souji must, because he folds inward like a wilting morning glory and sighs out, “I just didn’t want to go home yet. It’s too quiet.”

Of course.

Of course that would be what’s been wrong this whole time; Souji’s house is empty, dark, devoid of the sounds of life and laughter, and every time he leaves school, leaves Yosuke or one of their friends, he’s been going back to nothing but a stifling reminder that Nanako and Dojima are still in the hospital.

Yosuke nearly caves right then and there, nearly darts forwards and wraps his soul mate up in his arms to comfort him, to apologize for leaving him by himself, for letting Souji think that he’s completely alone, for leaving him to be lonely when from day one Souji has done nothing but make Yosuke feel like he finally had someone he could rely on. He feels himself cracking, feels the weight of his guilt because Souji needs him right now, and all Yosuke can bring himself to do is grin as if his heart isn’t sinking and say, “Come over to my place tonight, then, it’ll be like a sleepover.”

There is little solace to be had from the way Souji smiles at him, sad and grateful at the same time. Like a selfish coward, Yosuke takes it anyway.

Yosuke spends far too long thinking things over after that.

Once the initial shock of hearing his Soul Song completed wears off, once he wraps his head around the fact that his soul mate is actually is best friend and not Saki-senpai after all, Yosuke is… Not Okay.

His head feels like it’s going to explode; he’d spent the better part of a year convinced he’d already met his soul mate, that she had simply been taken from him before they could even discover what they were to one another. He’d mourned her, grieved the happy ending Adachi had stolen from them both, but in the end he had been ready to tuck her away inside his heart and take the next steps forward into the future. He feels like he’s betrayed her now, somehow. It rattles around in his skull like shards of broken glass, pricking him with the idea that he’d loved her but hadn’t really loved her but yes, he did, he could have, and now she’s gone but he can’t let her go but he did, and---! Over and over he turns it all, weathering the sharp edges and letting them knick him as he thinks.

He feels guilty over Souji, too.

Yosuke knows he’d been a terrible friend at the beginning, selfishly dragging a boy he barely knew into a grand game of make-believe, in which Yosuke could pretend he was a hero, pretend that he was doing it all to avenge his lost love. All the while clinging to someone he unknowingly was never meant to be with after all and blindly ignoring the missing piece of himself that had been right there beside him the whole time. He feels like he’s used Souji, like he’s disrespected Saki-senpai, and somewhere in the middle Yosuke doesn’t know if he even deserves to let himself love either of them.

He’d been ugly in his words and actions, too. Yosuke cannot count the number of times he’s said something horrible, homophobic, downright mean, right in front of his partner. The barbs had been aimed at Kanji, yes, (to whom Yosuke still isn’t sure he’s entirely made it up to despite doing his best to apologize and learn from his past behavior) but Souji had been there to hear it all. Yosuke realizes with a heavy heart that he’s never really apologized to his best friend for spewing his misguided ignorance out where Souji had to see. What would Souji think of him, if Yosuke were to play his Song for him now?

Would he reject him? Would he smile and sadly tell Yosuke that he’s already hurt him to badly to love him back?

And right about then is when Yosuke realizes just how deep in this he is. He wonders when he started to grow to love his partner – if it was something new, something recent that had developed in the time since Saki-senpai’s death, or if it had been there all along without him even noticing it. If that’s that case, then it means Yosuke has been dragging both of them behind him, tethering Saki-senpai’s memory to himself while he stings Souji’s heart along, stubbornly oblivious to the harm he’s done to all three of them.

How can he face Souji after this?

So he keeps the knowledge of their shared Song to himself. He hoards it like some kind of glittering treasure – because that’s honestly what it is. From the time he was little all he’d wanted was to meet his other half, to know them and to know the feeling of completion that comes from their shared Soul Song. He thought he’d lost his only chance; now that he’s discovered that he hasn’t, that he’s just been wasting it instead, the greedy parts of him want to cling as hard as they are able to make sure he never feels that sensation of inescapable grief ever again.

He makes an effort, though, to be there more for Souji. He stays with his partner whenever he can, hangs out with him on free weekends and after school until he absolutely has to leave for work or risk running late, giving every free moment of his time to make sure that, even if his souls mate doesn’t know what they are to each other, he at least never feels alone.

Nanako and Dojima are released from the hospital sometime after the start of the new year, and Yosuke sees life breathe itself back into his partner’s body at last. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed that gentle smile until, for the first time in two months, Souji turns towards him with a soft expression of genuine contentment. It feels like sunlight chasing back the grey and heavy clouds.

That day, the day that Souji smiles at him again, is also the day that Yosuke’s soul finally rebels and overrides the doubts inside his head. He wakes in the middle of the night with a dream lingering fresh in mind; images of Souji’s body, still and lifeless and draped over a power line. It starts as the nightmare from months ago but different, lacking the superimposition of Saki-senpai’s actual death, and slowly the nightmare fades into something better, something brighter, with Souji’s laugh and his kind eyes and the feel of his calloused hands across the skin of Yosuke’s arm. He dreams of terror turning into joy, of fog and sorrow birthing hope and happiness; a future Yosuke had once thought gone for good now alive and vibrant once again. In the dream there is a whispered breath of words, too tender for him to make out but the meaning of which resonates deep within his bones. There is the feel of lips pressed quietly to his own, the scent of clear water and spring grass and all the things that Yosuke has never known he’d needed before, and as the dream ends and Yosuke is left to lie awake missing the taste of Souji’s kiss, he makes a decision.

He climbs out of bed the next morning, blessedly free from school or work, and pulls his guitar back out of the case. He sits and runs his fingers over the strings, mimicking the memory of Souji’s hand on the piano keys. Yosuke can still hear the chords that his soul mate had played; it isn’t his half of the Song but he knows it now. He lets it play out in his head as he shifts his fingers into their proper positions. When Souji’s parts ends in his mind, Yosuke’s hands continue the melody on the strings of his guitar, the notes falling into place as if they had always been connected, never divided into two.

He finds he doesn’t need to practice until it’s perfect; the sound of his soul ringing out to answer the echo of Souji’s is already perfect enough.

Yosuke spends the rest of the morning digging through the last of the boxes from his closet. He pulls the microphone from its hiding spot and sets it up on his desk, connects it to his laptop. He only needs to record it once.

The view of the town from the overlook is strangely lovely in the late afternoon sunlight. Yosuke stands with his arms crossed, staring down at the place that he’s come to think of as home. Beside him stands his partner, the person he’s come to think of as home.

He’d called Souji up almost immediately after he’d finished recording, before he could chicken out and waste another ten months waiting for the right time. He’s had right times, had a million of them; he just hadn’t been able to see them when they came. Too deafened by what his head wanted to hear the way his soul had been ringing. He’s nervous – of course he is – and wrapped against his chest his hands have begun to shake. But he knows what he wants now, knows what he should have been looking for from the start, and he’s come too far to back out now. Besides, he’s caught a glimpse of what it could be like to lose a soul mate and he would take on Ameno-Sagiri all by himself to stop it from ever happening again. Even if Souji isn’t in danger of dying (at least, Yosuke hopes,) he’s familiar with the pain of not knowing, of pining from a distance and never making a move. Soon Souji will be gone, headed back to the city with Yosuke still in Inaba, and unless Yosuke tells him before he moves then he might not get another opportunity for a long, long time. Because, as he’d reminded himself once before, you can still lose someone without them being dead.

He looks over at his best friend, who gazes out at the town below them with a soft, fond smile. The falling sunlight casts a dull halo behind him, making him shine like gold in the rays of not-quite-twilight. He’s breathtaking. Yosuke as noticed it before, has allowed himself to acknowledge how beautiful Souji is on more than one occasion. At first it sparked envy, a desire to be similar – if even just a little. Now, though, with his heart trying to pull him closer, closer, closer still, the idea that this beautiful, ethereal person is his and his alone is like a balm on blistering skin. He’s lucky, he so lucky; Yosuke just hopes that luck is still on his side.

“I hated this place when I first came to Inaba,” he whispers, hoping he isn’t about to make a massive fool of himself. “You can tell how small the town is from up here…”

Souji turns to watch him.

So Yosuke continues on.

He tells Souji how, somewhere in between all the kidnappings and the deaths, he’d grown to somehow love the town. He tells him that there still isn’t anything there, not really, but that he has people now, friends and memories that make everything seem just a little bit more like home. Souji watches him all the while, silent, with that careful smile that makes Yosuke’s knees feel weak.

Yosuke keeps talking. He breathes out a message for Saki-senpai, one last one, and uses it as a final goodbye. The end of it he shapes, morphs it, takes the words into his hands and molds them into something new: a confession of sorts, for the one that’s held his heart all this time. He thinks that Saki-senpai would approve.

“You’re special to me, you know?”

He listens hard, past the crescendo of the Song inside him, and he thinks he can hear Souji’s breath catch for just a moment.

Before his partner can say anything in return, Yosuke reaches up and slips his headphones from around his neck, holding them out for Souji to take. “I need to play this for you,” he says with his mouth. Please, he says without speaking aloud.

Confused, but trusting him all the same – just like always, even when he shouldn’t – Souji takes the headphones and places them over his ears. Yosuke hurriedly digs out his MP3 player and brings it out of sleep mode; he doesn’t need to find the song he wants, it’s been pulled up ever since he’d downloaded it earlier that afternoon. He swallows past the fear.

His hand is steady as he presses ‘play.’

Yosuke chews on his bottom lip as he watches Souji’s face. At first there is simply neutral curiosity. Then there is a slow build of realization, followed by a sharp, shaking inhalation, grey eyes going wide and lips parting in a breathy, wordless note. Souji stares at nothing as he listens to the sound of Yosuke’s soul, poured out across the strings of an acoustic guitar; sweet and pretty, like hard-won love and summer sun.

And then the song ends, and Souji slowly looks up at Yosuke as if he’s seeing color for the very first time.

Yosuke, his lips say, forming the word without voice. He sucks in another breath, like he cannot get his lungs to fill. Trembling, he tugs the headphones away and lets them rest against his neck, hands tight around the orange plastic. “This… this is…”

Yosuke nods; slow, careful. He licks at his lips and exhales, “It’s us, Partner.” He searches Souji’s eyes with his own, hoping against his nerves for a sign of something good.

Souji holds his gaze, but it flicks back and forth as if he’s searching, too. His breathing quickens and every other breath is a hushed, disbelieving word. “I never… I thought—I thought that…”

“I know,” Yosuke shushes in response. “I know. I’m so sorry, I know.” Because he does. Everything that Souji cannot put into words, Yosuke knows. He knows he was an idiot, that he’d been convinced Saki-senpai was his soul mate, that he hadn’t acknowledged Souji’s Song for what it was that day in the music room and had let his partner believe they weren’t a pair. But none of it matters right now; none of it needs to be vocalized. Maybe later, someday, another time, but not right now.

Now, Yosuke tentatively brings his hands up to cover Souji’s own over the headphones. He squeezes their fingers together, slides them up, up along Souji’s slender throat, along his jaw, coming to rest with his palms on his partner’s cheeks. And as he reaches, Souji reaches back. Long fingers clutch at Yosuke’s wrists, slide over the fabric of his sleeves, higher, up to his shoulders, his collar, his face, until those same fingers are caressing his skin and tangling into the hair at the nape of Yosuke’s neck. At some point the two of them meet in the middle, bringing their foreheads together in perfect unison, like a single image in a pair of mirrors.

I love you, their souls whisper in unison.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

Souji whispers his name against his lips and Yosuke nuzzles against him in return.

There is a sound like tinkling glass inside them as their lips finally meet in a kiss; a sound like waking, like the rise of the sun after a hundred years of night, a perfect melding of strings and piano in the desperate, gorgeous music of something once broken now made whole.

They stay like that until sunset, pressed so close together that their hearts beat as one.

Chapter Text

There is a tickle in Souji’s throat all through November. It burns when he swallows wrong, causes him to cough once or twice out of nowhere every so often. Nothing major; just a tickle. If, sometimes, he tastes just the barest hint of blood in the back of his mouth after a particularly deep cough, well, he is fighting shadow monsters in a world shrouded in supernatural fog.

He has other things to worry about, though. Like finishing the Heaven dungeon as fast as he can. Like keeping his team and himself alive long enough to reach the top and catch Namatame.

Like rescuing Nanako

He can’t stop just because he’s getting sick, because of a little tickle in his throat that sometimes refuses to go away for hours at a time. He’s survived worse; he can still fight Shadows with a minor cough.

It doesn’t go away after November is over. It’s there throughout December, too, more insistent, deeper-rooted. It spreads from his throat to his chest and goes from being just an occasional tickle to a kind of pressure behind his sternum. It’s like he’s got some kind of drainage happening, like he’s got fluid somewhere down in his lungs; a stuffy sort of feeling that rattles a little on the harder coughs – still only a couple at a time – and makes him wonder if he’s grown an allergy to the fog. He wouldn’t be surprised, honestly. After all, the glasses only keep their eyes from being obscured by the ever-present mist; they don’t do anything to keep the team from breathing it in. (And fog is water, so it would make sense for him to have something sitting in his lungs if he’s been breathing tiny droplets of monster-vapor.)

But, again, he has other things to worry about. Nanako and Dojima are still in the hospital and Adachi is on the loose; they can’t stop now, not when they’re all so close to bringing the real killer to justice, not when Souji has a murderer to catch and an empty home waiting for him when he’s too exhausted to keep fighting for the day.

If he was being honest with himself, that was probably the worst part of it all. Adachi having literally killed people notwithstanding, every time they left Magatsu Inaba without having reached the end, every day that Adachi still remained at large and Souji went home to that house of deathly silence, it was just another reminder of his failings. He hadn’t been able to protect Nanako, he hadn’t been able to stop Adachi from escaping into the TV; the quiet and the dark and the stillness that greeted him every time he crossed the threshold felt like mockery.

You weren’t fast enough, smart enough, strong enough.

Just another reason to finish their pursuit as quickly as they can.

For two entire months the empty house is like a weight on Souji’s shoulders, slowly crushing him to death. He doesn’t sleep much – too many dreams of disaster – nor does he really remember to eat. He cooks still, out of habit and the desire for even a semblance of normalcy, but more often than not he just packs it away in a bento for the next day. Not that he really eats that, either; instead, he invites people to spend lunch break with him at school and lets them tackle most of what’s in the container. It keeps it from going to waste and helps Souji to keep up appearances. Because he’s the leader, that’s what he has to do.

He knows that the other members of the team can see him fading at the edges; none of them are dumb or blind. He’s seen the worried glances that Chie and Yukiko send his way when they think he can’t see them during class. He can tell by the slight downward curve of Rise’s lips, Kanji’s furrowed brows, Naoto’s intense, assessing stares. They know he’s not completely alright but there’s nothing they can do to change it. He appreciates what they can do, obviously – when they come to check on him or invite him to hang out on a rest day. Or, more notably, their determination in battle, their fierce resolve, the way they throw themselves into bringing the case to an end with just as much fervor as he does. He sees it all and he is so, so grateful for them. He could never ask for a better team.

But they have responsibilities, too. In between their hunt for Adachi, his friends all have work, school, families that need them to come home, so no matter how much he might want to, Souji can’t monopolize all their time – it just wouldn’t be right. And it’s not like they can spend every waking moment in the television either, because magic or not, they’re all human and humans wear down. Souji had pushed his team nearly to the breaking point when Nanako was still missing; this situation might not be the same but he still isn’t about to do that again.

He visits Nanako and his uncle when he can, especially on the days when none of his friends can hang out, so he does get to see them. It’s not the same as having them home, though, and that’s the major issue. Given the chance, Souji would camp out in one of the lobby chairs if they’d let him, but visiting hours only go so late into the evening before the hospital staff kicks him out with a “come back tomorrow”.

So Souji spends a lot of the later hours of the day alone.

The only reprieve from the constant feeling of inevitable, punishing solitude that he seems to get is around his closest friend. Yosuke, almost eerily attuned to Souji’s moods as he is, has taken to dropping in after his shifts, even when he’s clearly exhausted. He sometimes makes the excuse that he hasn’t had any time to study and could Souji help him with his homework, please? They usually don’t get much of anything done; most of the time Souji has already long-since finished several days worth of homework just for something to occupy his mind. (There are also rare nights where there is no homework due the next day, so that particular excuse falls a bit flat.) Other times, Yosuke will grab food from Junes before heading out and simply come over with a set of store-bought bentos and a movie he’d stuffed into his bag before school. It’s on those nights that Souji actually does eat.

Yosuke sits and talks with him after school until he has to leave for work, Yosuke sends him texts whenever he can while on shift, Yosuke calls him when on break if he knows that Souji is alone, and then again after work on the days he absolutely can’t come over. He waits for Souji in the mornings so that they can walk to school together, invites him to spend the weekend together if Souji has no other plans, goes with him to visit Nanako and brings her snacks or little trinkets from Junes. Yosuke is a godsend.

Souji finds he can let his mask slip, just a little, around him, too. He knows that Yosuke already knows the cracks are there, just like the others do, but Souji is more comfortable acknowledging them himself when it’s Yosuke that’s looking. Souji is the leader, the commander, the pillar of strength with a hundred different Personae in his head; he still has a mission to complete and a team to lead and he can’t falter, he can’t crack, because if he does then he risks everything. He has to keep up moral, has to be unflinching in battle so the others have someone to look to, so that nothing (else) falls apart. So even while his friends share those worried glances and those furrowed brows, Souji keeps pretending that he’s got everything under control. He powers through the burnout that has settled in, sunk its claws into his shoulders, filled him with empty exhaustion, and all the while he keeps his outward facade carefully in check. He can buckle later, once everything is finished.

But around Yosuke it’s different. Yosuke is his equal, his partner, second-in-command of the Investigation Team; he’s also familiar with the feeling of loss and of loneliness. He never judges Souji when it’s clear he hasn’t been taking care of himself, nor does he let Souji lie to him and say that no, it’s alright, you should go home after work and sleep, you need to rest. Maybe it’s because he’s been with Souji from the beginning, knows more about him than anybody else in the world. Maybe it’s because he’s the only one of the team to have seen Souji cry, on that awful November evening when Nanako had called him “oniichan” for what he thought would be the last time.

Souji barely remembers anything past breaking down that night. He knows that Yosuke had somehow managed to get him home and convinced him to wash off the sweat of battle, because he has a very vague, fuzzy memory of sitting on his futon and shivering, hair still damp, with Yosuke’s headphones lying on the work table and the sound of the shower running in the distance.

He can’t be sure, because his mind had been too quiet and too noisy all at once to tell what was real and what was a dream, but Souji thinks there may a have been a moment, somewhere in the darkest hours of the morning, where he’d felt the sensation of long fingers carding tenderly through his hair.

But that was November, and Souji hasn’t had a chance to think about anything besides their mission for very long, let alone something that might not even have been real to begin with. He has to make it through December now, has to stop Adachi, has to keep himself sane in the hours that he’s forced to be alone, and even then he tries to block out all idle thought lest it turn and twist and drag him under without warning.

So really. With two solid months of stress and grief and very few chances to breathe, it’s no wonder that he’s having difficultly doing so. It’s no wonder, what with the no sleep and the barely eating and the house with no heat and the damp winter air outside, that there’s a tickle in his throat or traces of toxic fog still sitting in his lungs.

Souji continues to ignore his increasing symptoms, even as they start to get nearly obstructive. He hides them from his friends, from Nanako and Dojima, and even from Yosuke. He especially hides them from Yosuke; his partner has already worried far, far more than he needs to over Souji’s health and if by some cruel twist of fate Souji gets too sick to fight on anymore, the team is going to need Yosuke to lead them. Souji doesn’t need Yosuke burning himself out, too.

Which is why, when Adachi has finally been captured and Ameno-Sagiri lies rusting in the ruins of Magatsu Inaba, Souji continues to keep the burning, choking feeling when he breathes a secret. He knows that Yosuke will be upset with him, will blame himself if he finds out that Souji’s been hiding his illness to make sure Yosuke didn’t wind up sick as well.

Besides, their victory is a cause for celebration, and his friends have all worked so hard and been through so much. Souji can’t take that moment of victory away from them by bringing down the mood with his shitty health.

So Souji endures it. He forces back the sudden, minor shortness of breath that seems to be happening more and more frequently. It’s to be expected; he’s just come off of two months of unending stress, of fighting in wet, awful conditions and then returning to a cold house without even a working kotatsu, all while staving off the most persistent bug he can ever remember having. He does, however, begin making an effort to take a little better care of himself, because while he appreciates everything Yosuke has done, it isn’t his partner’s job to do so – especially not now that the stress has lifted somewhat.

Souji makes sure he takes warm showers and then dries off thoroughly afterwards so he isn’t going to bed with wet hair. He buys cold medicine, and tea that’s supposed to help boost his immune system and clear out his chest. They seem to help; the steam and the warmth of the showers eases the tension he feels while inhaling and the tea makes it easier for him to sleep. The cough wants to linger? That’s alright. Souji isn’t sick enough to warrant any worry just yet, and it doesn’t impact him to where he can’t go to school or to work or be sociable. He takes it easy over winter break, anyway, and wears a facemask to the hospital when he visits his family. He doesn’t want to risk breathing anything onto Nanako while she’s still weak.

By the end of December the cough has gotten a little deeper, a little wetter. It’s less frequent when it happens, though, so Souji takes it as a decent sign that he’s slowly knocking whatever this is out of his system. He figures it must just be the gunk in his lungs working its way out – which is only further justified when he feels something shifting during his rare bouts of coughing. He’d briefly wondered if maybe he wasn’t coming down with pneumonia, but he only has the slight cough and the scratchy throat, so a quick search at the library and online makes him think, “probably not.” Just to be sure, though, he tells himself that if he isn’t completely well by January then he’ll go to the doctor. But, since it feels like something is trying to come loose in a productive way, he also decides to wait until he sees real issues functioning before letting it bother him too badly.

He’s holding out pretty well by the time New Year’s comes around.

The group makes plans to go out together to celebrate, to visit the shrine, to just be normal kids for once. It’s the perfect way to put the whole mess of a year behind them, and Souji finds he’s actually a little excited for it. His mood and mental state are improving steadily now that things aren’t so consistently terrible, and he’s feeling well enough physically that he doesn’t think his cold will be a problem. As long as he remembers to take some medicine beforehand and not push himself too hard, he should be fine. He is a little sad that Nanako won’t be able to join them, (she’d been pretty disappointed herself when she found out the hospital wouldn’t let her leave for the night) but he promises to take her to visit the shrine once she’s all better and makes a mental note to buy her some sweets to compensate.

They all decide to meet up separately at the shrine so that no one is left waiting on anyone else to get ready. Rise in particular seems to get a kick out of this, because in the days leading up everything she keeps trying to rope Chie and Yukiko into shopping for new outfits with her. She gets a strange, sparkly, conspiratorial look in her eye whenever she manages to catch Souji’s gaze while the subject is being discussed, so he gets the impression that Rise is hoping to use the opportunity to try and get their resident “useless lesbians” together at last. He chuckles and silently wishes her luck.

The idea of dressing up for New Year’s doesn’t seem too bad, though, so when the day arrives he bundles up as best he can without it being obtrusive and slips into his own charcoal grey kimono, just for fun. It might not be strictly advisable, but he’s at least made sure he’ll be warm enough not to freeze. He takes a dose of medicine about half an hour before he sets out, and drinks two cups of tea just to be absolutely sure.

He meets up with Naoto and Kanji first, since the both of them are just wearing casual clothing and likely took the least amount of time. Rise finds them next, and as she approaches them her face is contorted into the slyest, most self-satisfied smirk that Souji thinks he’s ever seen. He sees why a few minutes later, as Yukiko and Chie come wandering into view, both in kimono and both walking very slowly as they keep sneaking glances over at one another and blushing furiously. Souji holds his hand out low behind his back, palm up, and feels a giggling Rise slap him five where the other girls can’t see. (Not that they have eyes for anyone but each other, anyway.)

Surprisingly, Yosuke and Teddie are the last to arrive. Souji hears Teddie shouting exuberantly before he sees them, so he has absolutely no warning whatsoever when he turns around to greet the last two members of the IT and nearly chokes on the spot.

Under his open jacket, Yosuke wears a deep, cinnamon-colored sweater that Souji has never seen him wear before. It’s fitted, hugging his chest and the curve of his waist in a way that is wholly unfair. The neckline dips into a low v-neck, showing off the dusty, muted rose of the shirt underneath – which still doesn’t quite go high enough to hide Yosuke’s collarbones. The worst (or best) part of his outfit, though, are the tight, tight black skinny jeans that cover the lower half of his body. There is a soft flush to his cheeks and the tips of his ears and when Yosuke spots Souji in the crowd he smiles and suddenly Souji finds he’s having trouble breathing properly.

(Whether it’s from his newly racing heartbeat or just the cold medicine beginning to wear off, he couldn’t say.)

The group huddles together to wait out the time until the count down, and somehow, naturally, he and Yosuke wind up standing next to each other, so close that Yosuke’s arm brushes against his own whenever the brunette moves in a certain way. Souji doesn’t know if he’s supposed to feel this warm; he can feel it in his face, his neck, in the pit of his stomach, and it comes with slightly shaking hands. He hopes he hasn’t suddenly developed a fever on top of everything else.

But he came here to have fun with his friends and to ring in the new year with hope for an end to the chaos of the previous one, and he’s not about to leave before midnight hits. He does his best to ignore the way his cheeks flush when Yosuke bumps into him again, focusing on the happy faces of his teammates and the excited chatter all around him instead. He has to focus harder, after a while, to try and also ignore the way his chest is slowly beginning to constrict the longer he stands there.

It starts off as nothing but an irritation; it’s nothing more severe than he’s been dealing with for two months already. As time goes on, though, it gets more and more uncomfortable, until it actively feels like there’s something obstructing the base of his throat as he tries to inhale. He has trouble getting the air back out of his lungs, too, having to push a little harder than his body would do normally to get his chest to empty so he can suck in another breath.

At some point, just before the clock strikes twelve and the old year dies to birth the new, Yosuke throws an arm around Souji’s shoulders and whispers, “Happy New Year, Partner” against the shell of his ear.

For a single, terrifying moment, something inside Souji’s body twists. It sends a jolt of pain through him, like he’d swallowed something without chewing properly and had it lodge deep in his esophagus to choke and stretch and tear at him on its way down. Except it isn’t gradually going away. He goes to take a breath in shock, his body trying instinctively to help move the impeding object back down through muscle contraction, but nothing. Happens.

He tries again and still his lungs don’t fill.

He brings a hand up to his clavicle in fear, just as the countdown reaches zero and midnight officially hits. His friends whoop and cheer around him, and Souji is jostled to the side as Yosuke, arm still over Souji’s shoulders, joins in the merrymaking and knocks into him. A moment later, Teddie tackles them both from behind and the movement slams Souji forward, forcing him to take a stumbling a step or two away in order to maintain his balance. It distracts him from Yosuke’s arm, from the mounting terror of not being able to breathe, and as he lurches he feels whatever it is in his chest shift just enough that his next inhale goes through.

He takes several deep, gulping breaths, and smiles weakly when Yosuke looks at him with wide, worried eyes.

Yosuke asks him what’s wrong but Souji just waves his concerns away with a quiet, “it’s nothing.” He says nothing more as Yosuke turns to scold Teddie for nearly bowling them both over, clearly thinking that to be the cause of Souji’s distress. Souji silently apologizes to their odd little bear friend for the undue tongue lashing, and adds “sweets for Teddie” to his mental list underneath “sweets for Nanako.” It’s cowardly, but Souji is still trembling from nearly choking to death on nothing, so the energy and ability to properly explain what really just happened is well out of his reach for the time being.

As Yosuke and Teddie bicker, Souji uses the distraction as a cover to slip away for a moment and try to get his bearings. He pressed the heel of his hand hard against his sternum, rubbing in small circles as if that will help him dislodge whatever it was that had almost caused him to pass out. His throat tingles as if he’s sucked water down the wrong pipe and he coughs once, twice, three times, doubling over for a second as the force of it bends him at the waist. He takes a rattling breath in, feels it catch on something wet, coughs again to bring it up. He spits, and his tongue tastes like copper.

He says his goodbyes and heads for home as soon as they all finish up at the shrine.

Souji wakes early the next morning with an unnamable feeling of deep-seated dread. He rolls out of his futon and spends several minutes on the floor trying to stop the strange wave of lightheadedness that comes with the movement. When at last he can sit back onto his calves and try to get up properly, he nearly crashes back down before he can get to his feet. Something isn’t right. It takes him far longer than it should to figure out what.

Souji can’t breathe. In his sleepy, half-suffocated stupor he hadn’t immediately noticed the way his lungs had to work to force him to exhale, nor the way spots danced in the edges of his vision with each painful, wheezing inhale. He feels sick – his head aches like it’s being squeezed, pounding in time to the throbbing, stabbing, writhing feeling deep inside his chest. It’s like his heart is being compressed, fluttering frantically at the lack of oxygen like a hummingbird in a cage. He sucks in a long, horrible, rasping breath, feeling it bubble, thick and sticky, as it hits the back of his throat. It stings; rubbing alcohol on an open, bleeding wound.

Panicked, Souji manages to stagger his way out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom as something like bile begins to rise in his gut. The bubbling intensifies, clotting and tar-like just beyond the back of his tongue and he feels the choking, jerking, telltale signs of an oncoming coughing fit. He flops his shoulder into the bathroom door and leans against it, letting his weight help him swing it open; he barely is able to reach for the light switch before the coughing wracks his body.

Souji gags and something comes up the back of his throat as he coughs, deep and hacking, feeling it all the way down to his weakening knees. It tastes like metal, like red-hot iron searing along his windpipe as he wretches and gasps over and over again, until he can feel a blob of wet, limp something sliding across his tongue and out onto the floor. Blindly he stumbles over to the counter and props himself up with violently shaking hands. Tears cloud his eyes as he bends low over the sink and coughs and coughs and coughs until his strength is gone and his throat, his chest, his body is positively wrecked.

Everything tastes like blood, more and more of it dripping from between his teeth with each sobbing exhale. With every bone-shaking hack, Souji vomits up another clot of that same, bitter something, leaving him only a split second in between to suck in another ragged breath before his chest heaves and he’s back to spitting up another slimy clump of whatever has taken root inside him. It’s minutes before the torture ebbs; minutes longer before it comes to a stop. By the time the coughing has subsided, Souji is left a shivering, half-conscious mess against the biting edge of the counter. He pulls in a breath and finds it easier. He pulls in another and feels the tightness in his chest ease just a little. One more, and slowly, utterly exhausted, he pushes himself up until he’s able to stand.

He blinks away the saltwater obscuring his vision and very nearly screams at what he sees.

There is blood everywhere. The white of the sink is awash with it, the counter, the mirror, the floor, the wall; all of them are splattered with thick patches of dark, dripping red. But there is worse to see.

Floating in the blood in matted, soggy clumps—

are flowers.

They’re all around him – pooling in the sink, plastered to his hands, trailing from the doorway where he’d been a moment too late on his way in. They aren’t just pieces, either, just stems and leaves, but fully formed with white, star-shaped petals and pale yellow centers all stained crimson as they lie limp and drowned upon the floor.

Souji stares in unadulterated horror.

He thought he’d just been getting sick.

His mind shuts down as he makes his way out of the bathroom, leaning against the walls for support and taking one painstaking step after another down the hallway. Somehow he manages to make it down the stairs, to gather up the cleaning supplies from the downstairs closet. He drags himself back to the second floor and leans against the opposite wall from before, taking care not to step in the bloody footprints he’d left in his wake.

He doesn’t remember cleaning up the bathroom, scooping up the scarlet-soaked blossoms and tossing them into the toilet, flushing them out of sight. He doesn’t remember numbly wiping the blood from the wall, the mirror, the sink, doesn’t remember slipping and sliding on the wet tile beneath his feet, doesn’t remember scrubbing at the red before it can stain and continuing to wipe every surface he can reach long after the initial color is gone.

When he’s finished in the bathroom he starts back out into the hall. Back and forth across the floor he goes, all the way to the stairs and back again, wiping at the footprints until none remain. He moves to the stairs next, then the places in the kitchen and the downstairs hall where the last of the bloody tracks lie. He tucks away the cleaning supplies when he’s done.

Souji comes back into himself hours and hours later, after the sun has long-since set, and vaguely notices that his sleep clothes are replaced with a different, fresher pair. His skin feels frozen in the heatless winter air that permeates the house, his hair wet against his pillow. He doesn’t remember stripping off his clothes to dump into the washing machine, has no memory of sitting in the shower until the water ran from pink to clear, then from clear to bitter cold. He lies there and doesn’t remember climbing back into his futon after sitting freezing under the icy spray for more than an hour.

Instead, he remembers the flowers. He remembers the feeling of pain and sickness as they traveled up his windpipe and out of his mouth. He remembers the taste of the blood, the bitterness of the petals; he remembers the way his chest had squeezed and his lungs had filled not with air but with moon-colored blooms.

He whimpers softly, and the sound is swallowed by the empty, lonely dark.

From somewhere over to the side there comes a faint buzzing. It pulses like a heartbeat, accompanied by a harsh white glow. Souji shifts until he can look over at the noise, reaching one shaking, clumsy hand out from beneath his comforter to try and grasp at the square of light. His fumbling fingers brush against his phone just as it stops ringing.

He pulls it back toward him with all the strength he has left and digs his thumb between where the two halves fold together. It takes him several tries to push the halves apart and flip the phone open; when he does finally succeed, the light from the screen makes him scrunch his eyes shut in pain. He’s still blinking away the blindness when the phone starts buzzing again.

Souji’s hands are already trembling – weak and uncoordinated from the blood loss, the lack of food, the sickness – so the moment the phone begins to vibrate he loses his tentative grip. Down it drops into the folds of his comforter. He grabs for it, claws at the fabric with fingers that feel boneless, tries to heft himself up onto an elbow but cannot get his arm to support his weight. He manages to bring his hand down on top of the phone and mash his knuckle into the “accept” button right as the phone goes silent once more.

‘4 missed calls from Aibo.’

His heart makes a little flutter of happiness at the sight of it.

And then immediately constricts.

Souji cries out wordlessly as he feels his body convulse. The tightness in his chest comes creeping back in, twisting over his heart and driving the air from his already battered lungs, turning his scream of pain into nothing more than a feeble, aborted croak. Fear burns hot and thick behind his eyes, blurs his sight, trickles down his face in the form of tears. He coughs as the flowers in his ribs dig their roots in deeper, and tastes blood on the back of his tongue.

“Yosuke,” he rasps, and the tiny, thin threads of voice left to him scratch at his throat on their way out. There is no one around to hear.

“Yosuke, help…”

Chapter Text

The sky is light again when Souji next opens his eyes.

He doesn’t really know where he is for a few minutes, his body tired and aching and his head pounding so hard he can barely think. He exhales and his stomach feels empty, sick; he inhales and his chest feels tight. As he tries to breathe he finds that his lungs will barely expand, that each breath is shallow and weak. It leaves a squeezing sensation behind his eyes and dots his vision with dull grey splotches.

Slowly he turns so that he can get one arm under himself and maneuvers until he’s able to sit up. He weaves for a few seconds and thinks that he might topple over, but he’s able to steady himself by leaning back on his hands. Afterwards he has to sit there motionless for a bit and reign in the overwhelming vertigo that threatens to make him vomit if he dares to open his mouth. He looses track of time after that.

Souji blearily fades in and out of focus for what seems like days. There is no sense of reality as he tries to piece together what’s happening, taking stock of himself one tiny little piece at a time as the haze in his skull allows. Beyond the persistent feeling of something being horribly wrong with him and the way his breathing is slow and labored, there is the painful, catching burn down deep in his chest. Part of it seems to be leftover from the fit that took place a little bit ago, but there is an ache there that speaks of muscles long strained, so whatever this is it’s been damaging him for a while now. Several hours at the very least – overnight more likely.

(Longer than that, highly probable.)

He licks at his lips and finds that they taste like iron and salt. Blood. Okay, he remembers blood… right? Yes. Somehow last night he had been bleeding. He runs his tongue across the backs of his teeth to discover another lingering taste, this one bitter and earthy, like what he would image licking a patch of unclean grass to be like. It sits on his taste buds like oil floating on water and he instinctively tries to swallow it back to wash it away – only for his dry, ruined throat to protest with a sharp, metallic pain.

Oh.

The memory of coughing violently, of heaving up splatters of scarlet, comes trickling back into his mind little by little as he picks apart the way his body hurts. Blood in the bathroom, flowers on the floor, pain and fear and asphyxiation; blacking out from weakness and lack of air after missing Yosuke’s calls.

Yosuke.

Shrieking, tearing pain lances through Souji’s body as violent coughing suddenly wracks him. He crumples over like a discarded paper crane, coughing so fiercely that he cannot even pause long enough between them to pull in more air. His vision goes white for a moment as what little oxygen he does manage gets lodged in his chest, catching just shy of actually making it into his lungs. Something clenches hard around his heart.

The feeling jolts him forward in a convulsion, forcing his diaphragm to constrict in a mockery of a hiccup, and Souji can feel something slithering up his windpipe into the back of his mouth. He brings cold, shaking hands up to cover his face as it hits his tongue and give a final, core-deep wretch. The object dislodges and Souji wheezes like he’s been punched as the airflow to his lungs is cleared enough for him to inhale. He pulls his hands away.

Terrified, he slowly opens his hands to reveal a perfectly formed white and yellow flower sitting in his palms, the edges stained red with watery crimson.

He isn’t dreaming. As much as he’d wanted to not believe his own memories of the night before, as much as he’d been hoping that it had all been a trick of his imagination and that he really did just have pneumonia, there is no way to deny that this is real and that he is horribly, undeniably screwed.            

Hanahaki, the “Heartbreak Disease” – a rare affliction in which repressed feelings of love cause flowers to take root in the infected person’s heart and lungs, slowly growing until the victim either asphyxiates or dies of heart failure. There is no treatment, no cure. The only way to combat it is to either have the love that sprouted the flowers requited, thus withering them at their source, or to surgically remove them, which only ever has a 10% chance of being done before it’s too late. Even then, on the all-too infrequent chance that the surgery is successful, the victim is left permanently apathetic, unable to ever feel the emotion of love towards the same person again.

Souji knows what it is, has heard enough about the disease at school, on news segments, during his cleaning job at the hospital. He knows what it is and what it does and he knows how destructive it can be when it isn’t caught in time. (And it is almost never caught in time.)

Souji feels his vine-ridden heart sink. He’s dying. There’s no way around it, he’s actively dying. Hanahaki can only be removed up to a certain point before it leaves irreparable damage behind; the longer it gestates, the more time it takes for the infected to seek help, the lower the chances of survival drop. And Souji has been feeling the tickle in his throat for over two months now. It’s spread from his heart to his lungs, up his windpipe, to the point where he’s now choking on the blossoms as they work their way further and further into him. The love must be deep then, he thinks, for his symptoms to have gotten so severe so rapidly. He wonders just how long the roots have been growing, buried deep inside his heart where he’d been blissfully unaware of their existence until last night.

And he isn’t stupid – oblivious at times, yes, but when he’s being smacked in the face with context clues it’s hard for him not to notice. Every time he’d felt the worst of the tickle, the ache, the cough, it had always been around one particular person. The constant visits, the gentle way he’d taken care of Souji when Souji hadn’t had the motivation to take care of himself, the way he’d made sure to check up on Souji every single night; it had exacerbated the illness until it seems that now Souji only has to think about him anymore. Whenever Souji had smiled at one of his partner’s stupid jokes via text, whenever he’d remember a wink thrown his way after class and feel that giddy, warm sensation of butterflies in his stomach, the flowers had been shifting in his chest. After last night, after the way Souji had nearly choked on New Year’s Eve because his friend had whispered against his ear and sent a thrill down his spine, Souji has no choice but to make the obvious conclusion.

He’s in love with his best friend.

And oh, if that doesn’t throw the whole previous year into a brand new light. The twinges in his chest whenever the other boy would call him “Partner”, the way Souji’s breath would catch whenever his friend looked at him with those eyes. It had been so easy at the time to write them off as just weird situational quirks and stamp down the idea of it being anything more. Yes, he’d found the other boy attractive, funny, wonderful, but he’d never allowed himself to imagine his feelings to be anything other than objective, platonic. His friend had made it clear a long time ago that he was indisputably straight, and so if Souji had ever once harbored any sort of feelings for his partner then he made sure it stayed well and truly buried.

But that had apparently backfired in the absolute worst possible way.

Instead of burying away a crush he’d been planting seeds, watering them, incubating them until they grew into something else, something more, and now, like a Shadow, they’re clawing their way out and demanding to be acknowledged. Except he can’t deal with his sickness the way he could a Shadow. He can acknowledge it and accept it and embrace it all he wants, but no amount of dialogue is going to make this okay. In fact, he wonders if that would make it worse somehow. If he let himself pine openly and allowed himself to imagine all those scenarios he’s secretly wished he could (holding hands, leaning on one another, resting his head on the other’s shoulder, things his heart wanted but his head blocked out), would it give the flowers fuel to wrap ever tighter? Would fighting it back the way he has been give him any more time?

He wishes he knew.

Because as terrifying as it is to admit, Souji knows that at this point it’s only a matter of time before the vines strangle him. He’s living on when, not if, because as far along as he is, to where it makes his chest constrict just thinking his friend’s name, there is no possible way that emergency surgery would give him back a full, unhindered life. He would either die on the operating table, or he’d be sent home with an apology and a “there’s nothing we can do.” Confessing is his only viable option but why seek out the humiliation when he already knows full well he’ll just be rejected, leaving the flowers to spread even more rapidly with the confirmation of his inevitable heartbreak. It wouldn’t even be his partner’s fault – no matter how much his friend might want to help him, it would be impossible for someone so entirely heterosexual to ever feel the same for him as what Souji felt. And maybe there was love there, but it was philia, platonic love between friends, and Hanahaki was not a disease that could be driven out by technicalities. At best, it would only serve to give Souji a quicker, less drawn-out demise.

Souji stares down at the flower in his hands, the blood slowly drying and turning into crackling red flakes against his skin. He doesn’t know what to do. (There’s nothing he can do.) With a heart heavier than even the weight of the vines around it, Souji slowly drags himself out of bed and pushes to his feet. He shuffles like a zombie over to his desk and drops the wilted bloom into the trashcan beside it, taking a moment to brace himself on the chair and combat the dizziness before turning and making his way out into the hall. He leans against the wall the way he did the night prior, and uses its sturdiness to keep him upright as he moves towards the stairs. It’s only because he’s so numb, that his brain is still in thoughtless shock, that he’s able to make it down to the first floor of the house and into the kitchen without another bought of agonized coughing.

He washes the blood from his hands in the sink and collapses into a chair at the table, where he stares at the wall without seeing it, tears slowly building in his eyes until they fall.

---

There is a knock at the door.

Souji blinks himself out of his disassociation, his eyelashes stiff and sticky with dried salt. How long has he been sitting there?

The sound of knocking comes again.

A glance over at the wall clock tells him that it is now very late morning, bordering on midday, and that he’s been sitting at the kitchen table for far, far longer than he’d realized. He isn’t entirely surprised. Having slept like garbage and not eating for more than twenty-four hours, plus the life-draining flowers and the loss of blood, it’s little wonder Souji is functioning like he’s only a hair’s breath away from slipping into a coma. He actually might be right now, for all he knows. Maybe that would be better.

The knocking returns, louder and more insistent this time, more like a banging than a regular knock. It sends a pulse of pain through Souji’s head each time the person’s fist connects with the wooden door, and he leans forward to prop his elbows on the table and grip at his temples with unsteady hands. He just wants to be left alone with his newfound fatalistic depression, thank you; he doesn’t want anyone else to see just how badly he’s doing.

But the banging doesn’t stop. It pauses for a few moments, tricking him, and Souji can just barely hear the muffled sound of his phone going off upstairs – but as soon as it stops, the noise at the door picks back up again. It’s clear that whoever is trying to get his attention is not going to give up until they get it, whether it be by phone or by forcing him to answer the door. He frowns.

Souji feels like utter hell; his chest is on fire, his breathing restricted and ready to cut off entirely with a single misplaced thought. Not only that, but he hasn’t had any kind of food or decent sleep or even water since the night before last and his entire body is making him acutely aware of it. He’s sick to his stomach with a blinding headache and is more than likely dehydrated, all in addition to dying. He is in no condition to be awake, let alone dealing with people right now.

His phone buzzes from upstairs with two more missed calls.

Souji groans into his hands, wincing at the ensuing vibrations as they rattle through his skull. There is a part of him, a very big, very loud part, which wants to just sit here until the person gives up and goes away. Maybe if he pretends he doesn’t exist then whoever is trying so hard to make him answer will simply forget that he does. A smaller, more logical part of him, however, knows that if the knocker is this determined to get hold of him then they more than likely will keep going until he either gives them a reason to stop, or they go over his head and get someone else to try and make him reveal himself. Like the police.

(And Souji really doesn’t want to get the cops involved; it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for someone who’s beyond helping anyway, and he especially doesn’t want it getting back to Dojima that he’s barricaded himself in the house. Or Nanako, for that matter.)

So, with all the strength that he doesn’t have and all the willpower he can muster, Souji tediously, painstakingly pulls himself into a standing position with the edge of the table and begins making his way over towards the entryway. He won’t let them in, he tells himself; he’ll just let hem know he’s alive and then tell them to go away.

The knocking has thankfully paused again by the time he reaches the door, the buzz of Souji’s phone slightly more audible now that he’s closer to the stairs. Outside, he can just make out the sound of someone cursing as the call goes to voicemail yet again, but the voice is too quiet, too muted through the wood for him to guess at the person’s identity. There aren’t too many people it could be, though, he thinks with another frown. If the person knows his phone number then it’s likely one of his friends.

He wants to go back upstairs and hide under his comforter.

Against every single cell in his body screaming at him not to, Souji reaches out and twists the lock. On the other side of the door, the sound of movement stills. Souji grips the door handle and turns it slowly with a hand that shakes from illness and rising anxiety. He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to open the door and explain to this person why they need to leave and not come back, doesn’t want to have to see one of his – probably worried – friends get hurt when he refuses to let them help. There’s nothing they can do for him, and he can’t tell them the reason why that’s so. Not without hurting them even more. (He doesn’t want to eventually die knowing he’d been an asshole to the people that he’s come to think of as family.)

He turns the handle further until it clicks and tugs on it just enough so that the thinnest sliver of light breaks the seal between the doorframe and the door. “Who is it?” he rasps, voice broken and weak. It feels like acid in the back of his throat.

There is a sharp inhale. “Partner?”

Souji instantly feels sick.

He tries to push the door shut again, to put that barrier back between himself and the compass point of his ravaged heart, but Yosuke is too quick for him. The other boy surges forward while Souji is distracted trying to quell the twisting of the vines and presses his weight against the door, outweighing Souji’s own weak body and accidentally opening it up enough to get his hand inside. The door itself is knocked from Souji’s trembling grip and he stumbles backwards a few steps before catching himself on the wall and gripping onto it for dear life, head spinning and vision whiting out as he gasps for breath. Yosuke, oblivious, clambers inside.

“Dude, what the hell?” he snaps, voice irritated but underlined with obvious worry. “Where’ve you been?”

Souji hears him shutting the door behind him, hears the rustling of fabric as Yosuke presumable wrestles off his outer winter layers. He stays as still as possible, clenching his teeth against the nausea, the vertigo, the shortening of his breath. Maybe if he doesn’t look at Yosuke – even when his sight returns – then maybe he can stave off some of the worst of the flare up.

Meanwhile, Yosuke is still speaking as if he hasn’t yet noticed the state that Souji is in. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday!” he scolds. For a moment his voice is muffled slightly, as if obscured by fabric, but then the muffling is gone and the sound is back to normal. “First you disappear in a hurry on New Years, then you won’t answer your phone. Now you’ve got me standing outside your house, beating on your door like a nutcase and you can’t even---oh my god.”

Souji peels his eyes open from where he’d apparently squeezed them shut without noticing. He blinks away the lingering white edges of blurry film over his vision and slowly lifts his heavy head to look at the boy whose flowers are killing him.

Yosuke stares at him from a few feet away. His scarf dangles from one hand as he stands there, frozen mid-action, with eyes wide and mouth agape. Fear and shock lace his expression. “Partner, wha— what happened?”

Souji can’t even begin to imagine what he must look like. Pale probably, sickly. He’s still in his rumpled sleep clothes, hair limp and tangled in places from where he’d fallen asleep with it wet; he can feel his entire body shivering from the cold and the strain of holding himself up, even though he’s still half slumped against the wall. He can’t see them, but he’s sure there are probably deep purple circles beneath his barely-focused eyes, just above where he can feel the lingering traces of tear tracks over his cheeks. (He prays there isn’t any blood leftover on his lips.)

Souji swallows thickly, a tiny cough escaping and causing his shoulders to jerk. He closes his eyes and slumps a little further down the wall as he pulls in a shuddering breath through his teeth and grimaces at the way it makes his throat crackle with pain. He hears Yosuke take a hurried step closer as he slides a bit more out of his pitifully upright position and cracks his eyes open just in time to see his friend reaching for him.

“Don’t,” Souji croaks, and it takes a herculean effort not to start coughing at the way speaking feels like death. He slides sideways against the wall as best he can, just a little further out of Yosuke’s reach. “…Sick.”

Yosuke makes a strained sound in the back of his mouth, eyebrows furrowing together in growing concern. “Holy shit, man, I’ll say. You look like you’re about to drop dead!”

A harsh bark of sardonic laughter catches Souji off guard as it spills from his mouth; he disguises it with a short round of hacking coughs pressed into the crook of his elbow. “Should go home,” he wheezes once he can manage words again. He doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to keep from spitting blood and flowers with the object of his affections standing so close. He pointedly shoves aside the budding feeling of warmth that tires to grow at the thought of Yosuke, sweet and amazing, being worried for his well being.

He has to swallow back something dense and bitter as it tries to lodge in his throat.

Thankfully, Yosuke doesn’t seem to notice the odder-than-usual behavior, of if he does he likely attributes it to Souji’s illness. He frowns, though, eyes scanning every inch of Souji’s wrecked form with an intensity usually reserved for enemies in battle. He’s not a navigator like Rise, or even Teddie before her, but Yosuke is eerily observant in a way that he rarely gets recognized for; there’s a reason he makes such a good lieutenant, after all.

Just as Souji starts to feel the creep of anxiety from his partner’s assessing stare, Yosuke huffs loudly through his nose and takes a step away, rolling his shoulders back and straightening up with a decisive nod. “Alright,” he says to himself, nodding again. “Alright, okay…”

He reaches for where he’s already hung up his coat next to the door, and for a moment Souji is hopeful that his friend has actually listened to him. But then Yosuke dumps the scarf still clutched in is hand over top of the coat’s hood and turns back to look at him with his face set into a look of stony determination. Souji feels his stomach drop out.

“You know,” Yosuke says as he toes off his shoes and steps further into the entryway. “I would ask why you didn’t tell anybody you were messed up, but after seeing you close yourself off for the past two months I think I can already guess.” He steps right into Souji’s space, ignoring the way Souji tries to shrink back away from him, and goes to place a hand on his shoulder.

Souji’s eyes go wide. He presses himself closer to the wall as the trickle of panic becomes a stream and Yosuke’s closeness spurs a wave of heat to Souji’s face, the flowers shifting in response. “No…” he says, voice quiet and sandpapery.

Yosuke pauses with his hand still outstretched.

Souji takes a rattling breath, feels it catch on the vines in his throat. “Go home, Yosuke,” he says again. “I don’t want—“ His words cut off abruptly as the roots in his chest pierce deeper, cutting off his air supply and sending him into a startled, painful coughing fit. He slides the rest of the way down the wall as his legs finally buckle and give out, throwing his hands over his face to catch anything that his body might try and expel.

Suddenly there are hands on his shoulders, an arm sliding around the curve of his spine, lifting, helping him to sit up and forward, fingers rubbing small circles into his shoulder blades. The new position helps; the hands and the faint scent of spice and Yosuke does not. His partner’s hands practically burn against Souji’s chilled skin, and while he tries to lean away from it, to jerk to the side and put as much distance between the two of them as he possibly can while fighting for breath, there is a small, stupid part of him, wrapped in choking vines, that wants. He wants Yosuke’s arms around him, wants to turn his head and breathe in the way his friend smells like orange tea and sunlight and the lingering chill of winter. Tears prickle at his eyes and he tells himself it’s just from the tearing feeling in his lungs but somewhere in the back of his mind he knows there’s more to it. He’s wanted for months now, even obliviously, and now that there is the tiniest example of his longing made real he’s in no position to enjoy it, or even to let himself pretend it’s something other than what it really is.

Flowers, bitter and limp and clotted with the metallic tang of his own blood, crawl up his throat and into his mouth. Souji clamps his teeth together until they ache and presses his hands against his lips to keep them sealed. He keeps the flowers trapped in his mouth and does not dare spit them into his palms.

Eventually, miraculously, the coughing thins out enough for Souji to part his lips behind his fingers and suck in a ragged, shuttering breath between his teeth. He does it a second time, then a third, and by the time he’s on his sixth or seventh half-successful inhale, he pushes the blossoms to the back of his mouth and swallows. The taste is awful, worse than when they’d been sitting on his tongue; the feeling of them sliding down into his stomach nearly makes him vomit them immediately back up.

“Don’t want me getting sick, too, or don’t want me seeing you vulnerable?” Yosuke whispers as Souji sags against his arms. He tightens his grip slightly, supporting Souji’s weight with ease. His voice is quiet, knowing, and somehow – in the lower, subtler notes – he almost sounds hurt. “Partner…” He trails off with a defeated sigh.

Souji lolls his head back with a muted ‘thunk’ against the wall. He keeps his hands gripped tightly over his face, labored wheezing muffled behind them, and looks up at his friend through heavy eyelids.

Yosuke’s face is pained. There is deep worry etched into the crease between his eyebrows, his mouth downturned and his lower lip held hostage by the points of his teeth. His eyes, however, are sad. The rich brown of his irises is dulled, deepened to something closer to a muddy charcoal grey, and as he watches Souji watching him, an unnamable emotion flits across them and the lines of worry deepen around his mouth. “Come on,” he whispers, “let’s get you off the floor.”

Souji has no energy left in his dying body to protest.

Yosuke wraps his arms tighter around Souji’s limp form and hoists him up until he’s somewhat standing again. He tugs at Souji’s elbow to try and dislodge one of the hands still clamped over Souji’s face, making a frustrated sound when Souji refuses to move it. “It’ll be easier if you put your arm over my shoulders,” he says softly, gentle and coaxing even in his worry.

(Souji has the idle thought that Yosuke will make a wonderful father some day and then has to shut his eyes tight to keep away the tears that mental picture tries to bring.)

Yosuke seems to think the action means Souji is fighting off another coughing fit, or maybe a wave of nausea, because he pauses in his attempt to move Souji’s arm and stays still to wait out whatever might be coming.

Souji focuses on the way his breathing hitches and snags, on the bitter aftertaste of the flowers still sticking to his tongue even now after he’s swallowed them down. He can feel the vines and roots seeking deeper purchase in his chest because of the image he’d unwittingly called forth, but his exhaustion actually works in his favor right now; he’s too tired, too resigned to hold onto anything for very long, so for now his lungs still work at least a little. The solid weight and warmth of his partner next to him, though, that is what prickles at his ribs and sets more flowers to bloom inside them. He cannot block out the very real person standing next to him, holding him up, breathing softly against him so that Souji can feel the way Yosuke’s chest expands with each inhale. Even without the sickness spreading through his body, Souji doesn’t think he’d be able to stop his heart from pounding with the boy he loves so close.

He coughs a few times into his hands, weakly, and when nothing dislodges or threatens to come up, he finally relents to Yosuke’s gentle grip on his elbow – though he does keep his blurry vision trained on the hand he relinquishes, scanning his palm for any sign of blood. Thankfully, there is none. He uses the back of his other hand to wipe at his mouth and it, too, comes away miraculously clean. The backs of his teeth still taste like metal.

“You good?” Yosuke asks him, taking Souji’s arm and draping it around the back of his neck.

(This isn’t fair, Souji thinks as he does it, because how many times over the months has he secretly wished he had the courage to lay his arm across his friend’s shoulders like this, the way that Yosuke so causally has taken to doing to him?)

Souji tilts his head to try and give his partner a semblance of eye contact, just barely falling short when he realizes he can’t bring himself to meet Yosuke’s gaze and looking at the corner of his lips instead. He gives a shaky nod in lieu of a verbal answer – all that he can manage at the moment for fear of his voice bringing up more blooms.

Yosuke’s frown deepens. He stays silent for a few moments, simply watching Souji’s face, until eventually he slides the arm around Souji’s back lower to settle his hand around Souji’s waist just under his ribs.

Panicking, Souji hisses, terrified that with Yosuke’s hand so closed to his ribcage that the other boy will be able to feel the roots of the plant through his skin. He brings his own free hand up to awkwardly brush at the one causing his distress, and pushes Yosuke’s fingers down until they come to rest against the curve of his hipbone instead.

Yosuke startles at the sound that Souji makes, gasping softly in shock and what can only be immediate guilt. His own breathing seem to stutter in his chest for a second, and he readily lets his hand be guided lower until Souji stops frantically pawing at him. “Shit,” he whispers, quietly terrified, ”shit, I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

Souji still doesn’t trust his voice, still doesn’t trust his plant-riddled chest not to betray him, so he squeezes his eyes shut against the way Yosuke is looking at him and settles for another nod. His heart feels heavy for reasons other than the vines – he doesn’t like the way he knows his partner is going to blame himself for supposedly being the cause of Souji’s pain.

Yosuke gives another, “shit,” under his breath. He shifts so that he’s pressed more tightly up against Souji’s side and settles his grip more firmly around Souji’s hipbone.

The action makes Souji feel warm. Yosuke has always been very expressive with his hands – gesticulating wildly when he’s excited or agitated, waving them around almost like a miniature shield when defensive or nervous. It’s something Souji has noticed about his best friend many, many times in the months they’ve known each other. At first it was nothing more than an observation, a simple, “oh, that’s a thing he does”, but then he stared watching.

He’s watched them enough to know that Yosuke’s hands have calluses on them: lines across his fingertips from his guitar strings, roughened patches across his palms from the hilts of his kunai, thins white scars from where he’s fumbled them and been nicked on the blades. He knows that not only are Yosuke’s hands sure, steady, capable of slicing a Shadow’s head clean off with the right weapon, but also that they’re strangely gentle. Souji has seen Yosuke ruffling Nanako’s hair, playfully shoving at Teddie without malice when Yosuke pretends to be more irritated than he actually is. Souji has also felt those same strong, long-fingered hands on himself – on his back when Yosuke prods him in the middle of class, on his arm when Yosuke reaches out on his more tactile days, on his shoulders when Souji had broken down at last outside the hospital and cried out every last bit of pain and stress that he’d been keeping bottled up.

(And maybe, if he tugs at the end of a memory that might be a dream, the one from back when he’d been too depressed and hollow to tell when he was awake and asleep, Souji can imagine that the careful fingers through his hair were real, too. He doesn’t have the courage to do anything but imagine.)

He lets himself lean against Yosuke’s side as his friend starts to guide him towards the stairs. It’s for balance, he tells himself, that’s it, just balance. He refuses to acknowledge the way it makes a tiny thrill go down his spine; his throat twinges regardless. The leaning actually does help, though, despite causing more tension in Souji’s body than it reasonably should. He’s still sick, after all, and weak from exhaustion and what is probably dehydration on top of the inability to breathe. He isn’t entirely sure how he managed to make it down the stairs this morning without just straight up passing out on the way, but as he lets more of his weight sag against his best friend he realizes that the likelihood of him getting back up the stairs on his own would have been nonexistent.

They don’t really speak as they go – Souji keeping his lips pressed tightly together and keeping his breathing as controlled as he possibly can through his nose – but every so often as they make their slow assent, Yosuke murmurs encouragement. “Come on, I got you”, or “easy, that’s it”, or “almost there”, all spoken so softly into Souji’s ear that he thinks he could cry. The petals clog his throat and he swallows them back with a dry mouth.

They come to rest at the second floor landing, with Souji out of breath for more reasons than he could ever say out loud. He droops forward, still in his partner’s hold, and brings a hand up to his chest to try and equalize the pressure he can feel building around his heart. He breathing gets louder, harsher, more like a wheeze and less like a normal inhale-exhale – though to say it’s been anywhere close to normal for the past couple of days would be lying. His entire side feels hot from where he’s been pressed against Yosuke’s body, leaving Souji flushed and nervous, shivering both from the exertion of moving around and the melancholy happiness of being so close to the boy he’s dying over. He closes his eyes again and presses his hand harder against his sternum.

Beside him, Yosuke makes a worried noise behind his teeth and adjusts his stance to better hold Souji’s weight. The fingers on Souji’s hip shift a little, seeking better purchase, and the pad of Yosuke’s thumb accidentally brushes against the hem of Souji’s shirt, almost-but-not-quite touching the skin beneath. Souji feels himself burn hotter. Heat floods his neck, his face, and he bites down hard on his tongue to stifle another wave of coughing as his chest tightens.

But being as close as he is, there is no way that Yosuke doesn’t notice.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Dude, I think you have a fever, you’re really hot.”

Souji lets out a startled, raspy bark of laughter. What he wouldn’t give to hear the last half of that sentence in an entirely different setting. Months ago, maybe, if he’d been able to figure himself out instead of bottling up what he can see in hindsight were the beginnings of a crush. Too late now, he thinks, and there is a desperate sort of angry resignation, a bitterness towards himself, the circumstances, everything. It isn’t fair that he’s just now able to come to terms with his feeling when it doesn’t even matter anymore. And how ironic – knowing that he’s going to die anyway should alleviate the fear of confession, but it’s because of how much he loves Yosuke that he can’t tell him. If Yosuke knew he was the reason Souji had a garden of life-sucking flowers in his chest, if Souji died and Yosuke knew the reason why, then Souji knows his partner would blame himself for another death he’d been unable to prevent.

Because as much as they might care about each other, Yosuke is unequivocally straight, and there is no way he’d ever be able to love Souji back in a way that would whither the flowers twined in his ribs. Souji could tell Yosuke everything and it wouldn’t do anything but leave Yosuke feeling like Souji’s death was his fault because he was too heterosexual to love another guy. Even if he wanted to, even if he tried – and he would try, that’s the part that breaks Souji’s heart the most.

Souji opens his eyes to pull himself back out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts and finds that Yosuke has tilted his head to stare at Souji’s face beneath the silvery fall of his hair. Souji forces himself to meet the other boy’s eyes, to try and outwardly pretend that he’s only mildly sick and not slowly succumbing to an incurable disease, and while he doesn’t manage to smile or even to shape his expression into something reassuring, he does manage to croak out a quiet, “Flatterer…”

Yosuke blinks at him.

A moment of silence passes where they both just stay the way they are, paused in the upstairs hallway with Souji trying not to imagine a different scenario, a better scenario in which he and his best friend are close enough that Souji could lean in and rest their foreheads together. He wants to. He wants to; not even to kiss, just to be close, but of all the stupid things his ragged heart has been crying for today, that idea is among the worst thus far. So instead he keeps his spotty vision focused on Yosuke’s eyes and the way they seem to flick downward for a moment, away from his own. Souji swallows the taste of bitter petals.

Yosuke’s lips twitch slightly into the ghost of a smile that doesn’t quite reach the corners of his eyes. “Dude, really?” Yosuke finally says, voice still quiet and pitched so low Souji thinks he can feel it rumble in Yosuke’s chest.

(He feels something twist inside his lungs in response, like the flowers are turning towards Yosuke’s warmth the way normal ones face the sun.)

Yosuke straightens back up as best he can with Souji still slumped against him and glances down the hallway towards the bedroom. “For real, though? I know the house is cold and all but you seriously feel like you’re burning up. We need to get you into bed.” He looks back over and shifts a little more, adjusting Souji’s arm across his shoulder. “You good to keep going?”

Souji only offers a weak nod in reply.

Walking on a flat surface is much easier than the stairs had been, and it takes far less effort to make it to the door leading into Souji’s room – which is good, because he honestly doesn’t know how much energy he has left to spare. Yosuke helps him into the bedroom and over to where the futon lies unfolded and unmade in the corner. He makes another odd, wordless noise (this one more like an aborted exhale), and slowly, carefully, he lowers Souji onto the mess of blankets.

The change from being upright to sitting down makes him dizzy. Grey eyes clench shut as Souji fights back the lightheadedness, bringing his hands up to cradle his head in one and cover his mouth with the other. Just in case. He can’t see Yosuke at the moment, but he can hear the other boy moving, hovering near him while tugging at the blankets to bring them around Souji’s legs. Souji wheezes through his fingers. “Been in bed… for two days…” he whispers. His chest seizes for a second, his breath catching on his next inhale; he bites down on his lower lip and coughs once, twice, shallowly into his hand. His throat aches.

He hears Yosuke sigh next to him. A hand, strong and long-fingered and calloused and gentle presses against Souji’s shoulder and guides him downward until he’s lying back on the futon. Energy already sapped, he doesn’t fight it. He brings his hand down from his forehead – the one on his mouth still tightly in place – and cracks his eyes open. It takes a few seconds for the blurry swath of colors at his bedside to refocus into the form of his friend.

Yosuke gazes down at him, worrying his lip between his teeth. “When was the last time you ate anything?” he whispers.

Souji shrugs.

“Okay… Water?”

Souji shrugs again. “…Dunno.”

“You don’t—! Partner!” Yosuke runs a hand through his hair and clenches at the roots in obvious upset. He lets out a long breath through his nose, sitting back and crossing his legs, before dropping his hand into his lap and bouncing the knee beneath it in a silent display of nervous energy. Despite this, his voice, while rougher, more agitated, is still quiet, his words a harsh stage whisper as he says, “I’m staying here tonight.”

Souji immediately feels the roots dig deeper, wind tighter into his heart. He stares at Yosuke with wide eyes, struggling to pull in a new breath, to keep the taste of iron from the back of his tongue. He opens his mouth to protest, even knowing that his voice won’t come, but Yosuke gives him a look and barrels over any words Souji might have been able to form.

“No. I don’t care. You’re sick as hell – you’ve been alone this entire time, you can barely move on your own…” He trails off and gives Souji a very intense look that could almost read as anger or annoyance were it not for the way his brows arch upwards in clear distress. “Partner, you just admitted you don’t even know when the last time you ate was. I’m not gonna leave you here to just… I dunno, die in your sleep because you still can’t tell me when something’s wrong.” Yosuke looks away then, down and off to the side like he’s staring at the floor beside his right knee, but even with the grey spots at the edges of his oxygen-starved vision, Souji can see the gleam of something wet in his best friend’s eyes.

Yosuke chews at the corner of his lip, taking a long, deep breath in before letting it out slowly. His shoulders droop with the movement, making his whole body seem to deflate. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He keeps his eyes trained on the spot he’s glued them to, unseeing and unblinking as the shine of salt water gathers on his lower eyelashes. “I should have come by sooner to see how you were doing. Like… I felt like something was off when you didn’t answer your phone, but I just… I guess I thought… after November… that you’d know you could come to me if you needed anything, ya know? Even if it wasn’t super important, cuz it’d be important to me…” He sighs. Ducking his head, he rubs at the back of his hair, hiding his face by turning it further away so Souji can’t see him. His voice is even quieter when he speaks again, carrying in a different direction where Souji almost doesn’t hear it.

“I should have been here…”

Souji stares at his friend, stunned. There is a new weight in his chest, one that has nothing (or possibly everything) to do with the flowers growing inside his ribs – this isn’t right. The whole reason he hasn’t said anything about the true nature of his condition is because he doesn’t want Yosuke to think any of this is his fault. Souji can handle Yosuke being upset with him for not telling anyone he was sick, he’s alright with Yosuke believing Souji was just being stubborn or hiding a perceived weakness; for Yosuke to blame himself for any part of Souji’s illness, even not knowing what it is, or for him to think he’s done something wrong or failed Souji somehow is the one thing Souji isn’t alright with.

He wants to tell his friend that it’s okay, that he didn’t know, that Souji didn’t tell him because he couldn’t. He’d tried, last night when Yosuke had been calling him, but he’d been too messed up to answer the phone in time, and for the hours preceding and directly following, Souji had either been head-first in the sink coughing up blood and petals, or he’d been passed out cold. He wants to explain that he’d been too sick too suddenly to even have any sort of warning for himself, let alone anyone else, but as he opens his mouth to try and find his voice, Yosuke takes a sharp, shuddering breath in and scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“A-anyway, yeah. Sorry. Uhm.” He straightens up, forcibly rolling his shoulders back and giving himself a decisive nod before finally looking back to where Souji is still staring at him with all the pain of a shattering heart. Yosuke does not meet his eyes.

“You just… stay here, okay? I’m gonna go shopping real quick and get some stuff to try and help.”

Souji licks at his lips in an attempt to unstuck his tongue. “You don’t have to do that,” he manages, voice crackling and impossibly quiet.

Yosuke makes a scathing, sarcastic noise that sounds like a mix of a scoff and a half-choked, mirthless laugh. He shoots Souji a hard look with pinched brows and replies, “No offense, dude? But uh, yeah, I kinda do.” He plants his hands on the floor and eases himself up into a crouch with a grunt. He braces his arm on his knees and leans forward, reaching out his other hand and placing it gently over Souji’s forehead.

Souji’s heart hammers against the vines encircling it, his breath hitching as the careful, calloused fingertips make contact with his skin. In that moment, before the flowers can surge to the back of his throat and bring the tang of blood and bitter petals to his tongue, Souji feels like he’s been suspended. Yosuke’s palm is warm, soft despite the barely-there scars, too thin to be detected. The touch itself is so vastly intimate, completely innocent and born from selfless concern and it hurts in a way that is devoid of physical pain. He can’t stop himself from instinctively leaning into it, pressing his forehead closer to the warmth of his partner’s hand. His face flushes; the tips of his ears and the bridge of his nose, the high points of his cheekbones – all burning like the last flicker of a candle just below his skin.

Yosuke frowns. “Yeah, that feels like a fever, alright.”

He pulls his hand away and Souji nearly rolls over to try and follow it, to chase the contact that made his pulse race but somehow didn’t launce him into a coughing fit. Souji feels the absence like a shock of cold – an involuntary whimper escaping, only for the sound to stay trapped in his sandpapery throat. A fresh wave of flowers begins to peel open low in Souji’s ribs.

Yosuke, however, seems to remain thankfully oblivious to the nature of his friend’s newest turmoil. He pushes himself to his feet and takes a few steps backwards so that he isn’t looming over Souji’s bed like some kind of nightmare. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promises, already started to back further towards the bedroom door. He keeps his focus half trained on Souji as he moves, clearly reluctant to let his partner out of his sight again. “I’ll get… I dunno, cold meds or something, fever reducer. Just…” he pauses, looks at Souji with a kind of desperate pleading shadowing his features. “Don’t move? Just rest? Call me immediately if something happens, okay? Or even text me, I’ll come right back.” He hesitates in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he anxiously watches Souji for a reaction.

Souji grits his teeth and forces himself to nod. He doesn’t have the voice to tell Yosuke that his phone has probably been dead for hours, nor does he have the heart to tell him that cold medicine is a lost cause. Souji has taken cold medicine, has been taking it, but no amount of it – or anything stronger – will work. Not against the flowers blooming in his chest.

(He also doesn’t want to tell Yosuke that there is still at least half a box of medicine left in the bathroom; his memory of the night before is hazy and Souji has no idea what state the bathroom is in, or whether there is blood still caked on the floor.)

Yosuke gives Souji one last long, searching look. He nods once, seemingly to nobody, and Souji can hear him mutter a quiet, “Okay…” like he’s gearing himself up to leave his sick friend behind. Souji settles into the futon as best he can with a body that feels like lead and watches Yosuke watching him. Finally, reluctantly, Yosuke steps out into the hallway and pulls the door almost shut behind him. He leaves it open just a crack, enough that he could probably hear if Souji were to call out for him to come back if he really tried. Souji doesn’t. Instead, he listens to the sound of Yosuke’s retreating footsteps – hesitating several times before cautiously picking up again – until he can hear the far-off sound of the front door opening and then closing with a faint click of metal.

Souji lets out a long, slow, shuttering breath as some of the tension bleeds from his body, leaving him far more drained than he thinks he’s ever felt before.

He rolls his head so that he’s staring up at the ceiling, blinking back a wave of wet-hot, choking grief that bubbles from the pit of his stomach and spreads to every last part of him. It’s like he’s drowning, submerged in a rising, boiling tide that threatens to spill out of his eyes and scald a trail down his face. He coughs, sucking in a mouthful of air through his teeth afterwards, and for once it’s not from the flowers in his throat; it’s what’s left of a sob that he can’t quite manage to suppress. Souji brings his hands up to his face, weak and shaking, and presses the heels of them into his eyes to try and stem the flow of tears before they happen. He can feel them building, prickling behind his eyelids, but he’s so dehydrated that there is nothing left to fall. He doesn’t know whether to be thankful or not.

He doesn’t like that he’s relieved about Yosuke leaving for the time being. He shouldn’t be, he doesn’t want to be – even without the romantic feelings now strangling him, Yosuke is the best friend that Souji’s ever had and the fact that Souji had been desperately wishing Yosuke would go hurts him. It feels like he’s betraying Yosuke’s trust somehow, especially since his partner had been genuinely concerned about him, but every second Souji had spent near the boy he’s in love with had been pure, phsyical hell.

Which makes Souji feel guilty, despite the fact that he very much is not spitting up flowers on purpose. For every coughing fit Souji had had to try and push down, for every petal that threatened to climb his throat and expose or choke him, there was – as there always has been – a very large part of him that was instinctively happy to see Yosuke. He enjoys the other boy’s company; it’s why he’d gone and fallen in love with him in the first place and wound up contracting a horrible, heart-stopping illness. Honestly, if his life had come with a complaint department, Souji would have kicked down the door by now.

Souji contemplates taking Yosuke’s words to heart and trying to sleep. He’s tired enough, physically and emotionally exhausted enough that he could probably pass right out if he closed his eyes. The thought holds no appeal, though. He’s spent the past day and a half asleep and it’s more than a little disconcerting to think that most of it was involuntary. Besides, if he sleeps he might not wake up again and Yosuke could come back to a garden of blood-covered flowers. He shudders at the thought.

But that still begs the question of what he should or can do with himself until Yosuke comes back; because that’s the thing, Yosuke isn’t gone for good, just gone for now, and when he comes back he’s planning on staying the night. Any other time, Souji would be excited at the prospect of his best friend sleeping over; now, though, it fills him with anxiety. There is no way whatsoever that Souji will be able to hide his sickness from Yosuke for the entire night – what if he has another fit without warning? What if such close proximity to his crush (although it’s inarguably far deeper than a crush at this point) for such an extended period of time exacerbates his symptoms? The longer that Yosuke is around him, the more likely it is that the other boy will find out somehow, will see the flowers and the blood, will know.

And that’s something else that adds another loop to this maddening spiral Souji’s thoughts have decided to take now that he’s awake and alone and trying not to have another panic attack. Provided Souji is still alive when Yosuke finds out (because he will, eventually, if not today then after the disease has claimed Souji’s life), if Yosuke already knows what Hanahaki is he will definitely try to figure out the person causing it. He already hounds Souji upon occasion as to whether or not there’s someone Souji likes, what sort of girl is Souji’s “type”, and faced with something like this there’s little doubt in Souji’s mind that Yosuke will begin the quest anew with frantic fervor. Souji selfishly hopes he’s unconscious or already dead by the time any of that happens, just so he doesn’t have to expend the last of his energy trying to come up with reasons not to give Yosuke a name.

Something else he doesn’t want to think about dealing with is the thought that Yosuke might try and push him to get the surgery, even if it’s already far too late for it to be of any help. Souji remembers, back in middle school when they had first mentioned the disease in class, wondering why people would ever opt not to have the surgery if it meant saving their life. He thinks he understands now; the thought of never feeling anything for Yosuke ever again is enough to make the vines squeeze painfully inside his chest. Even if he did survive, even if the damage to his heart didn’t kill him within the next couple of years, Souji doesn’t know if he could handle living with all-consuming apathy where love and friendship once bloomed. He could live with loving Yosuke from a distance, if the flowers would let him, as long as he could stay by his side as his “Partner.” But to look at the best friend he’s ever had in life and feel nothing would just be…

He thinks it might almost be worse than death.

Souji can feel the prickle behind his eyelids returning and he presses his hands harder against his eyes. Alone, he finally lets out a dry, shuttering sob like he’s been wanting to for ages now. Crying over his predicament is unproductive, a waste of what little time he might have left, but seeing as how there isn’t anything else he can do that will help, he might as well be childish for a moment and let out some of the building pressure before that alone kills him. There’s no one around to see him, anyway. (And besides, just like before, he’s too dehydrated to actually be able to shed much in the way of physical tears anyway.)

Souji is afraid. He doesn’t want to die, but he’d rather do that than see Yosuke hurt or lose him entirely; he loves Yosuke too much to live without him, even if it’s just as friends. He would have been perfectly happy to lock that little piece of himself away, to hide his affections for the rest of his life and never love anyone else if it meant the two of them could always stay as close as they are now. He would never have pushed, would never have wished for anything else, been content with what he had, but it seems that whatever counted as fate in Inaba’s already-weird existence had decided that Souji hadn’t given enough just yet. It had taken a chunk of his teenaged years and turned it into what would likely have been a PTSD nightmare somewhere further down the road, it had taken his family and nearly destroyed them, it had taken pieces of his sanity and left him with trust issues and what was probably budding paranoia. Now, in its cruelest theft yet, it was forcing him to make a choice between his own life and the one person he couldn’t bear to live without.

He feels sick. Actually, physically nauseous. His stomach is well beyond empty, to the point where he doesn’t feel the hunger, only the acidic sensation of his body trying to eat itself to compensate. The only thing in there is the mouthful of flowers he’d choked back earlier to keep from coughing them up in front of Yosuke, and they sit sour and heavy in his gut like he’s swallowed wet cardboard. His whole body feels weak, too – a combination of the oxygen-deprivation, the exhaustion, and the constant, simmering fear mixed with his sickness and a minor loss of blood. He doesn’t think he can do this. He doesn’t think he can pretend he’s not dying for very much longer, not in the face of his worried best friend, not when Souji is already so tired in so many ways. The temptation to break down and pour out his terror and pain and desperate desire to not die where his partner can hear is already overpowering and the more Souji thinks about it the more can feel the hopelessness creeping into his throat to drown him.

This isn’t fair! How much more is he supposed to give? He’s already stretched himself thin for months to keep his friends alive but heaven forbid he be allowed to think his job was done, heaven forbid he be given the chance to rest. He shouldn’t be petty or selfish, he knows, but right now he’s running out of energy to care. He’s dying, damnit, he’s earned the right to be upset right now!

Souji forces his body to move and rolls onto his front with a tiny burst of energy born from sheer frustration. He takes advantage of the house’s empty silence and buries his face into his pillow, biting into the fabric with all the strength his jaw can muster and screams. Out comes a gravelly, cracking sound that embodies every ounce of fear, of desperation, of anger, sorrow, disappointment, everything that Souji has been trying to bottle up and just can’t anymore. He screams until he’s out of breath and gasping into the pillowcase, until his throat and chest are raw, until he can feel the twist of angry vines inside his ribs. Then he takes a long, broken breath in and screams again. The end of it catches on his grief and folds in on itself until it becomes a sob. Tearless, he cries into the pillow until the last of his strength gives out.

He feels like a corpse when it’s over.

Wiped out in a way he didn’t even know he could still be, Souji lays there on his stomach with his face smothered in his pillowcase, sucking in what air he can past the fabric and the rising pressure in his windpipe. It burns on the way in, like coals in his throat, bright and sharp with a glow that grows brighter with each inhale. He shifts, lifts his head from the pillow to try and give himself easy access to fresher oxygen, and to his slow-blooming horror it does nothing to help.

Oh no.

No, nonono, not again, not now.

Souji takes in a breath as deeply as he can – and immediately drops his head back into the pillow as a massive, wracking cough shudders through him. He tastes metal and salt sliding along the length of his tongue, feels the light spatter of blood as it hits the backs of his teeth. Something lodges in his chest just before it hits the line of his throat and the next reflexive breath in never makes it into his lungs.

He wasn’t aware he still had the energy left in him to panic anymore, but as Souji prizes his head back up off the pillow and sees the faint smear of crimson on the white of the fabric, he feels his stomach dropping out. It’s like being plunged into the coldest water possible, so frigid that it nearly slams into him as solid ice. Yosuke will be back soon. Yosuke will be back soon and Souji had been holding onto hope that he could at least make it a few more hours without an attack, without his friend seeing. Once again, it looks like the universe has decided to steal that shred of hope away.

Souji pushes himself up on arms that nearly buckle beneath him and climbs to his feet with help from the nearby furniture. He almost collapses before he can ever take a step. Woozy, head reeling, he throws out a hand and plants it down on top of the dresser so hard his palm stings, but manages to steady himself once more and stands there swallowing against the flowers until he can get a breath in. This is quickly becoming a habit he would give his sword arm to be able to break.

Like an awful recreation of the day before, Souji stumbles – somehow – out into the hallway and then down it towards the bathroom door. The last few steps are practically at a run as he over exerts his failing body and has to let the forward momentum of his wavering balance keep him moving those final few feet through the door. He doesn’t make it to the sink this time. Instead, the moment he makes it into the room his legs give out and he falls, landing on his knees with a vibrating ‘CRACK!’ against the tile. Pain lances through him like lightning, stealing the last of his breath. He doubles over onto his elbows and curls into a wretched little ball as the shock to his body sends a spasm through his mutilated chest.

The flowers push their way up through his windpipe, coiling their roots ever tighter around his heart until it feels like it’s going to burst inside the greenhouse that his ribcage has become, and Souji coughs and gags and wheezes until the floor is slick with red and scattered blossoms and his vision clouds over black.

He falls to the side like a ragdoll when the last of his strength finally leaves him, narrowly avoiding bashing his head against the edge of the bathtub as he slides down onto the bloody, sticky tiles. Blindly, like a dying twitch just before the final spark goes out, Souji kicks at where he remembers the door being, trying to find it with his foot to push it closed. His heel connects with the bottom corner and he shoves with what little energy he has left until he hears the metallic click of the latch.

He slips away into limbo then, with only a muted sense of sound remaining. He hears the rush of blood inside his skull, the slowing beat of his pulse in his ears, and somewhere, as if from deep below the crushing water of unconsciousness, he can hear the far-off thumping of footsteps coming briskly up the stairs.

Souji fades in and out of existence, never quite making it into oblivion but far enough in that he can scarcely feel his body. He can’t move, doesn’t have the wherewithal to try. His breathing is shallow, ragged, with his throat and lungs burning and his mouth tasting of iron and acid. He can feel the damage to his windpipe causing it to swell, leaving a tight, harsh pressure after every forced exhale. His lungs barely respond as he struggles weakly to fill them, the vines wrapped between the spaces of his ribs preventing them from expanding. But it’s his heart that’s the worst. There is a horrible, stinging, pinching sensation around his heart; even in his semi-conscious state, Souji knows that the roots have probably begun to pierce through it. Oddly, perhaps because his brain is slowly powering down, he finds he feels… not quite peaceful, per se, but something bordering on acceptance. Resignation, maybe. He doesn’t have the energy to think about it too hard.

From off in the hallway, he can hear what might be a voice calling his name. He can’t be sure if it’s real or not, thinks it might be a hallucination. It doesn’t matter either way – his voice is gone and his body too destroyed to find the strength to answer anyway. Please don’t find me, he thinks, just in case. Don’t see me like this….

“Partner? Where’d you go?”

Please no.

“Dude, answer me, where are you?!”

I don’t want you to be sad.

“Why is there blood on your pillow?”

Yosuke’s voice grows noticeably more anxious with each unanswered plea, cracking slightly on the final word as Souji’s absence stretches on. The footsteps return, this time getting louder as Yosuke presumably draws closer to Souji’s hiding spot. There is a knock on the bathroom door.

“Souji?” Yosuke calls again, and the mounting distress is clearer now without the distance to obscure it. “Souji, are you in there?”

Souji doesn’t answer, wouldn’t even if he could. Childishly, foolishly, his half-conscious mind thinks that maybe if he stays quiet enough then Yosuke won’t find him – that his friend will keep moving, keep looking elsewhere. Or better yet, just give Souji up as a lost cause and go home so that Souji can die quietly. It’s against Yosuke’s nature, though, and there is a small part of him that knows this, even through the haze that fills his head and weighs him to the floor.

True to form there is another knock, louder this time, more frenzied. “Souji, if you’re in there, please fucking say something.”

There is a pause, like he’s waiting for a response, listening for words that Souji doesn’t have the ability to give. Souji can hear a faint sound of shivery breathing behind the door and an image of the worried, tense expression that had spread over Yosuke’s face just before he’d left flickers across the dark of Souji’s vision. He can picture the way Yosuke bites at his lip when he’s anxious or scared and trying not to let it show, the pinched look around his eyes. It’s not a look that someone as full of sunlight as Yosuke should ever be made to wear.

The door handle rattles like someone has taken hold of it from the outside. “Souji, please, please say something, I’m seriously freaking out right now.” There is another pause. Then, harsh and sad and cracking, there comes a whispered, “There’s a fucking bloody flower in your trashcan…”

Souji feels his tattered heart give a tiny lurch.

No…!

A shuddering, damp inhalation comes from behind the wood of the door and the doorknob turns until the latch clicks, but the hinges themselves do not squeak as if they’re being used. “Fuck it,” Yosuke whispers, voice bordering on panic now, “fuck it, I don’t care if you’re naked or something, I’m coming in!”

Before Souji can try and will his body to curl up tighter in a vain attempt at instinctive protection, the sound of the door being swung open reaches his ears, followed immediately after by a horrified rush of air like his friend has just been punched in the stomach.

“SOUJI!”

Footsteps on tile, the wet sound of socked feet on drying blood, someone dropping to the floor beside him and grabbing at his shoulders, tugging him, pulling him into a warm lap, trembling fingers sweeping the red-matted hair from his face. The touch is nice despite the circumstances, like a balm on his clammy skin, and Souji lolls his head slightly to chase after the feeling.

Yosuke shakes him gently, frantically. “Souji look at me, look at me, please! Wake up!”

Souji tries to peel his eyes open, the lids feeling like they’ve been glued shut. He feels them flutter a little, thinks he might have managed to let a sliver of light through, but his vision is still dark.

“Come on!”

I’m trying, he thinks. I’m trying, I’m sorry…

One of Yosuke’s arms circles around Souji’s shoulders, holding him closer, keeping him from sinking back to the freezing floor; the other disappears from where Souji can feel it. There is a rustling of fabric, then a tinny beeping sound overtop a plastic clicking before the quiet, obnoxious burble of a distant phone line. Souji leans into Yosuke’s heat as best he can – he hadn’t realized just how cold he’d been until now.

“I need an ambulance,” Yosuke says in a single desperate breath. “My friend is sick and he collapsed and there’s a lot of blood and I think he might be dying!” He makes a noise that’s somewhere between a whine and a sob and it tears at what’s left of the heart in Souji’s burning chest. “There’s fucking–! There’s flowers everywhere – it’s like he threw up flowers, I don’t know what to do!”

Souji wishes he could get his limbs to move; he wants to turn onto his side and nuzzle his cold, bloodied face into Yosuke’s thigh, to throw an arm around his best friend’s waist and tell him without words the it’ll be okay. He wants to be able to take that heart-shattering fear and anguish from his beloved’s voice and bring back the sunlight that Yosuke always exudes. His body lies limp and uncooperative, though, and so all Souji can do is listen, hearing slowly beginning to fade, while Yosuke finishes the phone call with a cracking voice. He tries to ignore the droplets of something wet and hot that land on his face when Yosuke leans back over him and wraps his other arm over Souji’s chest.

“Stay with me, Partner,” Yosuke whispers, pressing their foreheads together, gradually starting to rock back and forth with Souji in his arms. “Stay with me…”

He repeats it over and over again into Souji’s temple like a despondent prayer, and it’s the last thing that Souji hears as he finally slips away into dreamless black.

---

Sound is the first sense to return to him.

There is a whooshing, steady and hollow. It acts as a droning background to a high-pitched, mechanical beeping somewhere off to the side that makes his head ring with dull pain. Somewhere in the distance, muffled, there are faint voices exchanging words he can’t make out, and the sharp ‘tic-tic-tic’ of retreating shoes.

Next to come back is touch. Souji can feel himself lying on something soft; a bed, probably, but it’s firmer than his normal futon and seems to be slightly elevated so that he’s propped up and not lying completely flat. There is something he guesses might be a blanket draped over him that feels slightly scratchy and has little to no weight to it. Something kind of rubbery presses lightly into his face, just below his cheekbones, and apparently has been shoved up his nose. It doesn’t hurt him, which is nice, and as he breathes in he notices the cool stream of air that trickles from it. He breathes again. Nothing catches in his lungs.

There is a chill to the room around him. It doesn’t seep too badly through the blanket, but on the parts of him that are uncovered he feels it the most – his neck, ears, and face, and also, oddly enough, his right wrist all the way up to his elbow. His hand, however, is warm, with something slotted between his fingers. He flexes them just barely, and whatever is covering his hand gives a gentle squeeze in return.

“Partner?”

Souji tilts his head towards the voice. It’s quiet, rough, laced with tired hope. Even half alive, Souji would recognize it anywhere. He takes another breath, deeper than he thinks he should be able to take, and pulls at whatever strength his heavy, aching body might have left. He focuses on grounding points – the warmth on his hand, the voice beside him – and slowly, haltingly, Souji manages to crack open his bleary eyes.

At first there is pain. The light overhead is not particularly bright, but to eyes that have been bathed in darkness for an eternity, the florescence is like a blow to the back of his skull. He feels his face twist into a grimace involuntarily and he has to will himself not to squeeze his eyes shut and hold them like that, instead settling for narrowing them down to slits as he waits for the light to even out. Eventually it does and the room comes into bleary color, a collection of shapes finally fusing together to form a solid picture with fuzzy edges. Beside him, a blurr of copper and orange shifts into his peripherals.

“Hey,” Yosuke whispers, and the sound is so full of hope that Souji instinctively wants to reach over and bury his face in the crook of his friend’s neck and shoulder.

He shifts a bit more so that Yosuke is centered in his vision and squints at the other boy’s outline. It takes him a few seconds of stillness, of willing his eyes to focus properly, of blinking to try and clear the lingering static from the edges, before Souji is able to open his eyes a little further and actually see. Yosuke is an absolute wreck.

Tear tracks stain his cheeks and his eyes and the tip of his nose are red from crying. His hair is tangled in places along the sides and right in the front, as if he’d delved his fingers into it at some point and tugged mercilessly. He sits hunched over the side of Souji’s bed in a shitty plastic hospital chair that looks about as comfortable as their school desk chairs after a long night of fighting in the TV world, one arm draped over the mattress. The other arm lies crossed underneath it, with Souji’s hand wrapped up tightly in his own.

Yosuke feigns a smile, the expression looking strained and worn thin. “Hey,” he repeats, “you with me?”

Habitually, Souji parts his lips to try and respond, only to find his mouth and throat unbearably dry. He swallows a couple of times in an attempt to fix the problem and has to unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, his throat raw and stinging like he’s poured down a bottle of bleach.

“Don’t,” Yosuke chides him softly. “Just nod if you can hear me.”

Souji does, and his vision only swims a little bit.

His partner lets out a long, deep sigh of relief, his entire body releasing a tension that had seemed almost embedded into his bones. He sags forward and drops his head onto his arms. “Thank god…” The hand over Souji’s own squeezes again, tighter this time, like he’s still afraid to let go, and his muffled voice cracks and stutters as he speaks. “I was so fucking scared, I thought…” He pauses, tightens his hold on Souji’s hand even more. There is the sound of a ragged inhale. “Don’t ever do that to me again, man. Ever. I can’t… I almost—!” He sits back up with a shuttering breath, fresh tears already spilling from his eyes and carving new paths down his face.

Yosuke lifts Souji’s hand from the mattress and curls his free one around it as well, holding it in both of his own like it’s something sacred. He screws his eyes shut and brings Souji’s fingers to his lips. “You dumbass!” he rasps against the backs of Souji’s knuckles. He presses a fervent kiss to each one, lingering for a moment before moving on to the next; when he’s done, he leans down to rest his forehead against the places his lips have just touched. “You absolute fucking dumbass…”

Souji stares at him, utterly gobsmacked as his partner cries silently against his hand. Surely this is a dream? One last hallucination before his brain finally shuts down and he succumbs to the choking, bitter flowers rooted around his heart. He takes an experimental breath in and while it does hurt, it’s more like an ache, a soreness that sits around his muscles and not deep inside his ribs. His chest moves, rises and falls with each new set of inhale-exhale – there is no catch, no halt. Nothing clogs up his sandpapery throat. Nothing tickles.

A fantasy then. Maybe he’s already died and this is what has been awaiting him; the illusion of a flowerless heart, of working lungs, of the boy he’s fallen helplessly in love with holding his hand and placing kisses across his fingers. There is no way that this is real.

But maybe, if all of this is nothing but a vision as the last few traces of his life flicker out, then would it be such a terrible thing for Souji to be a little selfish? Just this once? He’s either already dead or about to be so, just one stolen moment can’t be too much to ask for. He lifts his fingers, still unsteady in his body’s weakness, and brushes them through the copper strands of Yosuke’s fringe that lay within his reach. He’s always wondered what Yosuke’s hair felt like, if it would be coarse because of the dye or if it would be soft to the touch. He notes with quiet delight that it is, in fact, as soft as he’d hoped it would be.

Yosuke twitches at the contact. Eyes still shut tight, he nuzzles his face further down the back of Souji’s hand and closer to his wrist. The action pushes Souji’s fingers deeper into Yosuke’s hair and Souji delicately catches at a thin lock of it to stroke beneath the pad of his thumb.

Souji swallows again, licking a dry tongue over his bitter-tasting lips to try and make his mouth work properly. “Y’suke…” he breathes, his voice nothing more than an echo of the air slipping past his teeth. He has no idea if the other boy – the image of his beloved – can even hear him, but it doesn’t really matter. He just wants to say it. If only this one time. Because he knows he’ll probably never get the chance to do this again.

He just wishes it could have been real.

He shifts his fingers so that he can lovingly sweep a few strands of hair from where they’ve fallen across Yosuke’s eyes, a small, sad smile tugging at the corners of Souji lips. “Love you…”

To his surprise, Yosuke wheezes out a sharp, soggy bark of laughter. “Yeah, no shit, Partner.” He repositions one of his hands, sliding his palm around to fit against Souji’s own and slotting their fingers together once more. His grip is like gentle iron, tight and secure but not enough to be painful. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “Nice of you to wait until you nearly die on me to let me know.”

Souji is… confused. Even for a dream this is a little unexpected, and he’s still foggy-brained on top of everything, not yet fully “awake” and functioning.

He doesn’t get a chance to do much more than furrow his brows slightly, because Yosuke finally lifts his head from where he’s been reverently pressing it to Souji’s wrist. Red-rimmed eyes open, and the usual amber-brown of his irises has now turned a hurt, murky auburn. “You wanna know how I found out?” he asks, and there is an edge of near-hysterical sarcasm to his words. He doesn’t wait for Souji to react. “Turns out my best friend has something called ‘Hanahaki Disease’, which makes him grow goddamn morning glories in his heart, because surprise, surprise! He’s been bottling up his feelings again, and now it’s literally killing him.”

Yosuke pauses to take in a shuddering breath, glancing away as he sniffles and blinks against the new wave of moisture that has begun to gather in his eyes. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to sit there and be told that the most amazing person you’ve ever known is dying and there’s nothing they can do to save him? That unless someone can find whoever it is your partner is in love with and get them to love him back in the next couple of hours, you’re gonna lose him? Because it fucking sucks!”

Yosuke tugs away the hand not holding Souji’s like a lifeline and furiously scrubs at his face with the back of it. He pushes the hinge of his wrist against his eyes and ducks his head to hide the tears now freely flowing down his cheeks. He sobs once, quietly, his shoulders trembling as he suppresses the rest. “I didn’t— I didn’t even know you were sick before today, I couldn’t… I felt so useless!” His fingers curl and uncurl around Souji’s own, rhythmically squeezing as if he’s trying to remind himself of Souji’s warmth and solidity.

Souji squeezes back as best he can.

“And then they told me I should go ahead and start saying my goodbyes, that you might still be able to hear me if I talked to you, and I just… We already did this with Nanako, I couldn’t fucking do it again.”

Yosuke leans in again, resting his forehead once more against Souji’s arm and wrapping his free hand over the pulse point on Souji’s wrist. He just breathes for a moment, letting the steady ‘beat-beat-beat’ beneath his fingertips pull him back in. His eyes reopen and stare unseeing down at the white fabric of the bed sheets. “So I broke down,” he whispers. “I started talking, saying anything that came into my head cuz I guess I thought maybe if I begged hard enough you’d just get better or something. I told you if you woke up I’d go out and drag every single girl in Inaba over here until I found the one you liked, and if that didn’t work then I’d go to Okina and try there, too. Anywhere you needed me to look. And then when… when you just kept slipping away, I didn’t know what to do, so I got desperate and said I’d go look for you a boyfriend instead if that’s what you wanted and that you could even have me because fuck, I’ve been falling in love with you forever but I’ve been too stupid to ever admit it.”

Souji’s eyes go wide. Even in those tiny moments he’d allowed himself to have, back when he hadn’t known just how deep his affection for Yosuke truly ran, Souji could never have come up with something like this. He’d never fully let himself imagine Yosuke returning his feelings, never bothered to treat it as a possibility because he didn’t want to acknowledge his own crush or give himself anything like false hope. So this, all of this, is well beyond anything Souji thinks could feasibly play out inside his head. If this a product of a dying brain then it’s gotten well away from him and left him reeling; if it’s a piece of whatever afterlife he’s been given, then it would seem the gods haven’t been paying much attention.

If it’s neither, then Souji might just have lost his damn mind.

He steals a quick look around the room while Yosuke’s gaze is still fixed on the bedspread, grey eyes flicking from corner to corner as best they can with Souji still a bit too weak to move his head. This is definitely the hospital; he’d spent far too much time here in between his part time job and his family being bedridden to not recognize it. The beeping sound he’d heard upon first waking is a heart monitor beside the bed, connected to his body below the scratchy covers by a thin black cord. The steady whoosh of air is a different machine entirely, one with a clear plastic tube that leads to something lying loosely across his chest. He remembers the rubbery something over his face and up his nose and realizes it must be an oxygen pump, feeding air directly into his lungs.

(Souji swallows and expects the flowers to come rushing back up his windpipe, still baffled when there’s no sign of them.)

He glances back to find that Yosuke is now watching him with a look of wild-eyed caution.

“You had a… a seizure or something right after that,” he says, voice so low it’s almost drowned out by the ambient sounds of the hospital machinery. “Started convulsing, coughing up more flowers. At first they thought it was another attack but when they went to try and clear your airways they pulled a bunch of roots out of your throat.” He stops to inhale deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling again as he slowly lets the breath back out through his nose. “I dunno what happened next cuz they made me leave, but then they came back like an hour later and told me you were gonna live and that it looked like you’d kicked out the entire plant somehow, roots and all. They said the only way that was even possible was for the love that grew the damn thing in the first place to be requited. Considering I had literally just told you I loved you, it wasn’t that hard to piece everything together after that.”

Silence stretches between them. In the quiet, with only the machinery for noise in the background, it had been easy to mistake this for a dreamscape, to think that he’s finally fallen comatose and that this is his one final chance to be at peace before his body gives in to death. But… it isn’t. Souji blinks slowly, taking in his surroundings with an altered perspective. He can still feel the non-weight of the blanket, the chill of the circulated air, the pressure of Yosuke’s hands covering his own. He isn’t dead, nor is he dying. Souji is awake and alive and this is really real.

It’s almost too wild to believe.

Because he’s spent so long convincing himself that this could never happen, that this is something he’d never be allowed to have, Souji still can’t quite process it all. Yosuke, sunny, bright, wonderful Yosuke… loves him back.

Yosuke loves him back.

Like a man who’s spent his whole life in the darkness finally seeing daylight for the first time, Souji lets the fragile spark of hope within him stay lit. It catches on the love-starved ground of his battered heart and fans itself into a small, steady flame. “I love you,” he whispers again with a stronger voice than last time. Because he wants to. Because he can.

He doesn’t notice that he’s tearing up until the lines in his vision blur out. He blinks to clear it away. “I love you.”

Yosuke stares at him. His expression is unreadable, too many different emotions mixing together and Souji can barely see through the thin trickle of tears that have started falling in earnest now. He hears the scrape of chair legs on the floor, feels the loss of heat as Yosuke relinquishes one of his hands from the desperate clinging to Souji’s pulse point. There is a quiet sound of rustling fabric, the creak and pop of plastic as Yosuke rises slowly from his chair. Warm, calloused fingers brush through the wetness on Souji’s face, tenderly wiping it away.

“I love you, too,” is whispered near his ear, just before Yosuke nuzzles at his temple. “I love you so goddamn much, Souji, I was so scared I was gonna lose you.” There is a pause, a shaky breath, and then there are lips being pressed against Souji’s forehead, soft and reverent, and Yosuke’s fingers return to stroke though Souji’s hair.

Souji leans into it, revels in it without hesitation. A tiny shiver goes down his spine and for the first time ever he lets himself enjoy it. No flowers surge up to try and choke him, no clogging, suffocating mass of bitter petals fills his mouth with blood and bile. The tears gather faster as something new wells up inside Souji’s chest, bringing with it a feeling that might be budding joy. It’s been so long since he’s experienced hope; he almost doesn’t recognize it.

Yosuke dips his fingers down again to wipe futilely at Souji’s cheekbones. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he murmurs, and another kiss is pressed to Souji’s hair.

The hand in his own isn’t enough. Souji shifts his free arm, the one still under the blanket, and starts to try and pull it free from its cotton prison. Something tugs at his skin, causing him to wince, and Yosuke must feel the expression under his lips because he pulls away to awkwardly reach across himself and place his hand over Souji’s shoulder. He pushes down gently to stop Souji from tugging his arm out of the covers.

“No,” Yosuke tells him, quiet and firm. He pushes down on Souji’s shoulder slightly, as if to hold it to the bed. “You’re gonna knock your IV out.”

Souji whimpers. “Wanna hold you.”

Yosuke leans back enough to where he can blink down at Souji with a faint dusting of pink across the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just searches Souji’s face with his eyes.

“…Please?” Souji rasps, because now that his heart is beginning to understand that he can have this, it refuses to accept anything else. It strains against his heavy body, reaching desperate tendrils of want out in any direction it can in hopes of quelling a months-long ache.

Yosuke’s expression softens. “Okay,” he whispers, squeezing Souji’s hand again.

The nurse finds them later, curled up against one another as well as they can be in the tiny hospital bed that only barely fits one. Yosuke is folded up like a cat at Souji’s side, head tucked into the space where Souji’s shoulder meets his collarbone, mindful of the breathing tube and the still-healing chest just below it. Souji’s cheek rests against the crown of Yosuke’s head and he’s long-since nuzzled into the softness of his beloved’s hair.

One of Yosuke’s arms is draped carefully over Souji’s stomach below his ribs – the other squished between their sides with their hands entwined.