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Kamisato Ayato is not a good man.
There is blood on his hands, lives he doesn’t deserve to take a heavy toll against his soul. People say you never forget your first kill. When you kill, you are not only taking someone’s life, but you are taking a bit of yours as well. Ayato agrees but not in the way that matters.
He kills others, and he kills himself, but there is no guilt in the action. Each body that falls is merely that, a body, and the only mark they leave in his life is a number. The last one was the thirty-second. That was over a week ago. Give it a few days and there will be a thirty-third.
Ayato already has plans stored for the unfortunate soul, each bloodier than the last.
“My Lord.” Thoma’s voice draws him to the present like an anchor to shore. He has always had that effect on Ayato, even from the very beginning. It should be a liability, but Ayato only finds it increasingly fascinating over the passing years.
Ayato turns his head, straightening his shoulder, and he presses his lips into a thin smile. “Ah, Thoma,” he says, his tone carefully light. He knows the questions Thoma will raise otherwise. It’s always all the correct ones and Ayato is finding it harder and harder to hide the truth from Thoma with every passing day. “You can just place it on the table, thank you.”
Thoma frowns but does as he’s told. He walks over to the table, his movements careful, and Ayato watches his back as he goes. Thoma places the tray on the table, ceramic lightly jostling against each other. Ayato doesn’t even try to hide the way his gaze is trailing after Thoma’s every move, but he does keep his silence. Thoma lifts the teapot and a gentle stream of hot tea begins spilling into the teacup. Unconsciously, Ayato feels the smile on his lips shift into something more genuine.
“Thank you, Thoma,” Ayato tells him when Thoma is finished, placing the teapot back next to the teacup. There is so much more he wants to tell him, the secrets sitting at the back of his throat threatening to spill out, but he forces his teeth against each other and bares them in a semblance of a smile.
“Of course, My Lord.” Thoma bows, ever the exemplary servant, then he straightens. His tone is helplessly earnest when he says, “Is there anything else you need?”
Yes, comes the automatic response. I need you to stay with me, if only for a moment. But he cannot afford to say it, not to Thoma, so instead, he says—
“No.” Ayato smiles, softening the edges of his eyes and his voice. The last thing he needs is an upset Thoma. “That is all, Thoma. Thank you.”
Once, a long time ago, Thoma would have nodded. He would accept Ayato’s answer with concern in his eyes, worry darkening the green of his irises, and he would go out of his way to ensure that everything goes well for Ayato over the course of the next few days. Once, a long time ago, Ayato would have turned a blind eye to it all and pretended he didn’t notice.
Once. Not anymore.
Now, Thoma pauses on the threshold, teeth gently biting on his lower lip and a furrow creasing the space between his eyebrows. Ayato wants to reach forward, to smoothen his frown and run his thumb along the corners of Thoma’s mouth. He knows from past experience that Thoma’s lips will turn into the shade of a pretty pink after. It is a sight he adores and he always goes out of his way to tease Thoma over it, but not like this. Not when it’s born out of a worry for Ayato that he cannot dissuade.
Ayato prides himself in his usefulness. To those seeking the Yashiro Commissioner, they will be met by a man who has braved the worst and come out victorious in spite of everything. An engagement shunned by their families? He can easily create an elaborate scheme that pleases both parties. A grand birthday for a boy who wants his friends to remember his party for years to come? Easy. All he needs are restrictions and a general list of the things he and his friends are interested in. Ayato is good at what he does.
But he’s not good at this. He’s not good at talking to Thoma without spilling every bit of gore and blood and the little, ruined, tattered thing he calls his heart. He’s not good at protecting Thoma, at keeping secrets to ensure that he will be able to keep living in the light. He’s not good at anything that comes with Thoma because he is always inherently and brutally selfish about him. He wants Thoma in all the ways he cannot have.
“My Lord,” Thoma begins cautiously, and Ayato cannot be forgiven for what comes out of his mouth next.
“Ayato.”
The words slip past the prison of his teeth, occupying the empty space between them. He watches Thoma’s eyes blow wide open, startled, his lips parting, and the syllables of Ayato’s name slip into his mouth. It plants itself there, a parasite creating a home for itself in the last good thing Ayato has left. He watches, horrified, and he wants to reel it back in, to pry it out of Thoma’s flesh and bones before it can destroy him too, but then Thoma’s mouth splits into a small, bewildered smile, and nothing matters anymore.
“Ayato,” Thoma whispers, as if the word is sacred. He sounds so awed, something like devotion spilling into every hum and vibration that forms the sound of Ayato’s name, and Ayato’s heart leaps from within his chest to the back of his throat. It’s bile and poison and it’ll drown Ayato one day but right now, he merely allows himself to drift.
Then, the gravity of the implications of Ayato’s words must have finally settled in Thoma’s consciousness, because Thoma’s eyes widen and his lips part with something else entirely, and he can only offer him a weak smile. Thoma is quiet for a moment before he inhales a shuddering little breath. When he looks at Ayato after that, something in his gaze has shifted. It’s harder, firmer, an implication of something hidden there.
“Ayato,” he begins again, a little more confident this time, and Ayato unconsciously leans himself forward. There is a gentle conviction Ayato doesn’t deserve when Thoma says, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing I won’t be able to overcome,” Ayato answers, the half-lie habitually rolling off his tongue. This is an old conversation, the words recycled and reused. Thoma doesn’t believe him, he never has, but he has never shown much of his disapproval beyond the slight tick in his jaw and the frown that would cross his features.
Now, though, things are different. Ayato doesn’t know what has happened since this moment and the last time they had this conversation—three weeks ago, he finds, can feel a lot like an eternity given the correct circumstance—but something has changed. Between the moment Thoma had closed the door behind him, turning an indiscreet blind eye to the bandages peeking above Ayato’s collars, and the second Thoma entered the room, bringing a tray of hot tea Ayato didn’t even have to ask for in his hands, a revelation must have taken place and Ayato was witness to the unravelling of the aftermath.
“Ayato.” And, Archons, Ayato doesn’t think he will ever tire of the way his name sounds in Thoma’s mouth, even if it is laced with an undeserved concern. Thoma’s gaze is steady, his tone brokering no room for arguments, and Ayato is helpless to the way his shoulders loosen and something bleeds out of him.
Ayato tilts his head back to meet Thoma’s eyes, and something about this all feels strangely like worship. With his knees folded underneath him, his hands splayed on the surface of the table, Thoma peering down at him with a kind of gaze that is entirely undoing, Ayato feels a lot like a man splayed across an altar, ready to be sacrificed to a god as long as the man holding the knife would always look at him like that.
It’s dangerous, this realization, but Ayato doesn’t have it in himself to do anything but drown in it. As long as Thoma is on the other end of the line, he will always trust him to pull him up for air in time.
“Thoma,” Ayato says, his voice hoarse. There is so much he cannot say, secrets and confessions that are locked in the cages of his ribs. Maybe, one day, he will be able to share a little bit of the darkness residing in him with Thoma and it won’t kill them, but not today. Not when Thoma is so beautiful. He cannot say anything.
And yet Thoma must understand him all the same because something in his eyes shifts, mutating and softening into something that is entirely ruinous, and Ayato almost wants to cry. “Tell me what’s wrong, Ayato,” Thoma says, voice soft and gentle and kind, Ayato can’t listen to him anymore without bleeding out of all of his softest places.
So he breaks eye contact, hanging his head like a man on his way to his execution. “I can’t,” he tells him and each word feels as if they are being wrenched out of his heart with a knife.
There is the sound of shuffling and without looking up, he knows Thoma is walking closer to him. “Ayato…”
“Please.” His fingers curl into fists. “Stop asking.”
“Why?” Thoma asks and he sounds honestly confused. “Because you won’t tell me?”
“Far from it.” Ayato’s eyes flutter shut, a lump forming at the back of his throat. “If you keep asking, I would tell you everything.”
Something about the confession stuns them both into a silence far too big for the little room they are in. Heat crawls up the back of Ayato’s neck, something heavy resting at the center of his chest. He doesn’t dare to steal even the smallest glances in Thoma’s direction. This is one of the rare times in which he doesn’t know what to expect out of Thoma. This is a kind of brutal vulnerability he has never allowed himself to have before, not even towards his own sister.
An eternity stretches between the moment Ayato finishes speaking and Thoma begins.
“Is there anything I can do?” Thoma says, a sense of earnest finality in his words, and Ayato feels foolish for ever thinking he will ever pry into Ayato’s secrets. The roots suffocating Ayato’s lungs loosen, air spilling into his pipes, and he feels a lot like a drowning man reaching shore.
He brings his eyes to meet Thoma’s, a gentle clash of volatile blue against steady green, and his mouth curves into a smile. One day, he promises himself. He doesn’t know what he will do, but he will do something. He owes Thoma the world for this, and he will grant it one day. For now—
“No,” Ayato says. He sees Thoma begin to protest and he shakes his head regretfully. “Thank you, Thoma, but this is something I have to deal with on my own.”
Thoma considers this for a moment, brows furrowing, before he sighs. “Very well, Ayato.” He doesn’t push for more and Ayato doesn’t offer. Then, as if he has been struck by a stark realization, Thoma brightens suddenly. “Are you free this afternoon?”
Ayato blinks, startled. “Yes, I am,” he answers slowly. Thoma knows this. They agonized over his strange schedule together. Today is one of the few days in which he has all twenty-four hours to himself.
“Good.” Thoma grins at him, the corners of his eyes creasing, and it doesn’t matter what has brought them to this very moment. Thoma is smiling at him as if he is someone worth loving—as if perhaps Ayato is someone he could love—and that is more than enough. “I want to show you something. Come with me?”
Thoma extends a hand, and Ayato is distinctly reminded of the boy he found lying on the shores of Inazuma’s bays. The boy had been still, practically lifeless, and Ayato remembers rushing to seek for a faint pulse. The walk home to the Estate had felt like centuries, each falling footstep feeling too much like a death march.
Ayato had been the one to save Thoma, then. He had been the one to teach Thoma how to love the sea again, too.
Ayato doesn’t know what it feels like to drown, but staring up at Thoma then, he discovers that his lungs are seizing the way a drowning man’s would. Drowning isn’t a good way to die, Thoma had told him once, something solemn. Thoma is rarely ever wrong, but Ayato thinks that if this is what it feels like to drown, he would not choose anything else.
Ayato smiles. “Of course.”
There is so much he wants to tell Thoma, so many secrets that are bound to kill them one day, but for now, this will be enough. Ayato pulls himself to his feet and although it is unnecessary, he takes Thoma’s hand in his.
Kamisato Ayato is not a good man. But what he has here with Thoma, he will not allow anything to ruin it. Not even himself.