Chapter Text
The next morning, Vanitas is woken up by a phone screen shining in his face.
He’s curled into Ventus’s side, head on his shoulder and arm slung over his waist—the only comfortable way to sleep in this tiny bed. Ventus, laying on his back, is scrolling through some website with one hand, the other absentmindedly petting Vanitas’s hair.
“Turn that shit off,” Vanitas mumbles, tilting his face into Ventus’s chest. “What are you looking at this early?”
“Oh, sorry.” Ventus turns off his phone’s screen and sets it at his side, his now-free hand coming up to hold Vanitas’s. “I’ve just been doing some research these past few weeks.”
“Research?”
“About what’s going on with you,” Ventus says. “There’s, like, a billion websites on it and so many books and forums and…”
As Ventus starts to ramble, a warm feeling washes over Vanitas. Ventus really cares so much that even while Vanitas was shutting him out entirely, Ventus was still thinking of him and trying to figure out ways to make things better. Honestly, Vanitas probably shouldn’t be that surprised because he knows how thoughtful Ventus is, but still—it hits a lot harder this time than it usually does.
“So I figured we could work on the clothes problem first,” Ventus goes on, unaware of the affection Vanitas is feeling. “There’s this thing called a binder—it goes beneath your clothes and is really tight so it compresses your chest. If you wear one, no one should be able to see anything.”
“That’s a thing?” Vanitas asks, but he figures out a few seconds later that it makes sense—his dark suit compresses his chest, so it stands to reason that something like that would exist for people without the power of darkness.
Ventus hums an affirmative. “I asked Sora about it since he has personal experience with this, and he gave me some advice about—”
“So Sora’s…” Vanitas suddenly feels stupid for how many questions he’s been asking, but it’s too late now. “Like me?”
Again, Ventus hums. “Yeah. I had no idea before, but since I found out about you, I figured he must be, too,” he says. “It was kinda funny, actually. I told him I needed to ask him a really personal question and didn’t want to offend him, and he just laughed and said that literally nothing is too personal after he carried my heart for a decade.” Ventus chuckles, fond. “But… yeah. He helped me pick a binder out for you, and I was thinking we could go pick it up today?”
Vanitas abruptly sits up, his heart racing. He doesn’t realize how blatant the fear on his face is until Ventus sits up too and reaches for his hand once again.
“What’s wrong, Vanitas?” he asks.
“So… Sora knows…” Vanitas says slowly, feeling both hot and cold. “Sora knows?”
“Oh, I—yeah, he asked who it was for and I told him. I figured it was alright since he’s the same,” Ventus says, his face starting to mirror the horror Vanitas feels. “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you first. I’m really sorry, Vanitas, I just wasn’t thinking…”
Vanitas’s hands are clammy and there’s that same sense of panic he felt when Ventus found out hanging over him. Ventus told Sora. The secret isn’t just Vanitas’s and Ventus’s anymore—now they have a third wheel who knows. There’s no taking it back.
But as much as Vanitas wants to be angry at Ventus, he can’t. At one time Vanitas would have screamed at him and gone storming off, but he knows now that there were no bad intentions in this—Ventus genuinely just wanted to help, and still does.
It’s only Sora, Vanitas tells himself. He may not feel as close to Sora as he does Ventus, but their hearts are linked—they’re linked so tightly that Sora is the reason why Vanitas has this body in the first place. And Sora carried Vanitas’s heart alongside Ventus’s for the same decade. It’s not the end of the world if he, of all people, knows.
“...tas? Vanitas?”
Vanitas comes back to himself to find Ventus looking like he’s about to start crying. “It’s—it’s okay,” he says, his voice raspy. “I just… wasn’t expecting it.”
“I’m sorry,” Ventus says again. “But… yeah. Do you want to come with me to pick it up…?”
Vanitas thinks on it for a moment but decides against it. While he’s accepted the fact that Sora knows and he logically understands that Sora would be the last person to judge him for this, he doesn’t want to see him right now. The wound, while not too deep, is too fresh to have any sort of conversation about the subject with anyone except for Ventus. “I don’t think so,” he says, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t need to apologize for that,” Ventus says. “I can go on my own. You’ll be fine without me?”
“Yeah,” Vanitas says. “I think I need to be alone for a bit.”
“Okay.” Ventus’s voice is thick with guilt as he pulls himself away. “I’ll be back later, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
“...Bye,” Ventus echoes, looking lost.
After Ventus leaves, Vanitas lays back down, covering his face with his hands. All of this is still so new that he has no idea what to do with himself. He’s happy that Ventus is supportive and helping him, but he hasn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time. He’d vowed to himself that he’d never let himself feel like this ever again, yet here he is, once again trapped in a storm of emotions.
“Shit,” he mutters to himself, rolling onto his side. His heart won’t stop racing, like something deep within him is telling him to run—away from his friends, away from his life, away from his body.
But he’s firmly rooted down here. The most important reason he can’t leave may have vacated the room, but Ventus is carried within his heart and always will be.
Ventus returns in the early afternoon with a couple of bags in hand. He brushes into Vanitas’s room with an ease that Vanitas envies, his hair windswept and a smile on his face.
“Hey,” he says as he closes the door and toes off his shoes. “Miss me?”
Vanitas rolls his eyes and straightens up, slinging his legs over the side of the bed so he can sit on the edge. “You were only gone for a few hours.”
“Aw, come on! You could play along for once.” Ventus sighs and shakes his head, bringing his haul over to the bed.
He pulls what looks like half of a black tank-top out of one of the bags and presents it to Vanitas. “Here. Go ahead and feel it,” he urges, pressing it into Vanitas’s hands.
So Vanitas does. He finds that the fabric at the front is thick and stiff, while the back is more stretchy. Can this really help? He’s scared to hope.
“Sora told me these can be hard to put on especially at first, so I can help you with it if you want,” Ventus says.
Vanitas purses his lips, goosebumps prickling at the back of his neck. Ventus is his other half and so much more, but the idea of letting him see something he’s so ashamed of is still painful.
Thankfully, it seems Ventus notices his expression. “I don’t have to look at you,” he says. “How about you stand with your back to me and I’ll help you put it on from behind?”
Vanitas feels lucky that he has someone so attentive to him—almost too lucky, like he’s undeserving. That’s a thought for later, though. “Yeah,” he says, sounding almost breathless. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
For a few more moments, Vanitas finds himself frozen. Lowering his feet to the ground seems like such a momentous task, but then he looks at Ventus and sees his adoring face and suddenly he’s already on his feet.
“Go on. Turn around,” Ventus encourages, and so Vanitas does.
Again, he hesitates, but then he exhales slowly and lets the darkness disappear from the top half of his body. He refuses to so much as look at his chest as he does so, gaze fixed on the wall as he lifts the binder up over his head and begins to pull it on.
It’s a bit trickier than he was expecting, but Ventus helps by pulling it down at his back when the stretchy fabric rolls up. The sensation when it’s on is akin to that of the dark suit—it makes him feel safe. Then Ventus hands him a shirt over his shoulder and Vanitas pulls it on, and then he just… stands there, too nervous to do anything else yet.
“You wanna turn around and look in the mirror?” Ventus murmurs, his hands lingering on Vanitas’s waist. Always there, always reassuring.
Vanitas closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s time for a leap of faith. “...Yeah.”
When he turns around, he keeps his eyes on the floor. He doesn’t move until Ventus speaks with such reverence that it’s almost embarrassing. “Wow,” he says from behind him, and Vanitas lifts his head.
The roar of fear melts away instantly as Vanitas takes himself in. It’s so much different than the first time he tried on this shirt—it actually looks good. It looks right. “Wow,” he echoes, at a loss for words.
“You look great.” Ventus places his hands on Vanitas’s shoulders, a smile on his face. “See? I told you we’d figure something out.”
Vanitas doesn’t speak, only turning to the side so he can observe his silhouette. His chest feels perfectly flat when he runs his hands down his front—just like Ventus. Over his time at the Land of Departure, he’s learned about all different kinds of positive emotions, but the one that this sight elicits is entirely new. It’s almost overwhelming.
When he turns to the other side to keep looking at himself, Ventus laughs. “You like it?”
“Yeah,” Vanitas says, too amazed by his own reflection to be snarky about the obvious question. “Can I try on some other stuff?”
Ventus grins. “Of course,” he says. “Well, actually…”
“What?” Vanitas asks when Ventus begins circling him like a vulture inspecting a carcass, starting to feel nervous again.
“Okay, so I don’t mind it, but that shirt is kind of tight on you, isn’t it?” Ventus asks, hands on his hips.
Vanitas looks down at himself again. Despite the differences in the way they were born, Vanitas has a broader physique than Ventus, thanks to years of hard training. Naturally, Ventus’s shirt is indeed tight around the arms and the shoulders in particular. “I guess so. Why?”
“I think there might be some of Terra’s old clothes sitting around somewhere,” Ventus wonders aloud. “Hang on. Let me go ask him.”
Before Vanitas can say anything else, Ventus has rushed out of the room, his excitement obvious. Vanitas finds himself smiling without even thinking about it. Every bit of Ventus’s support really does mean the world to him. How could Vanitas have let himself ignore Ventus for so long out of his stupid, unfounded fear?
While Vanitas waits and thinks, he continues to inspect himself in the mirror. It’s strange—for the first time, he can’t keep his eyes off of his reflection rather than cringing away from it.
Ventus comes back about twenty minutes later with several items of clothing in his arms. “Success!” he says, dumping his haul on the bed. “Aqua had to help us look, but we found some stuff from when Terra was our age. I took some of his old pants, too, just to see. They’re probably gonna be a bit long, but if you really like them then we can hem them.”
Vanitas nods and picks up one of the shirts. It’s similar to the ones Terra wears at present, so the color is alright. He pulls his shirt off and then the new one on with an enthusiasm he hasn’t felt in… well, ever, actually.
Ventus’s eyes immediately light up. “That looks great!” he says. “How does it feel? Any better?”
Vanitas steps up in front of the mirror again and inspects his reflection. This shirt definitely fits better, and when Vanitas tries swinging his arms back and forth and stretching them, he doesn’t feel like he’s going to burst a seam. He nods in agreement with Ventus. “Better.”
“Good.” When they make eye contact in the mirror, Ventus smiles and hands Vanitas another shirt over his shoulder. “Now, go on.”
They work their way through Terra’s old hand-me-downs. As Vanitas is pulling on the last shirt, he looks at his reflection and sees that behind him, Ventus looks like he’s about to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Vanitas asks, his insecurity making him more defensive than he should be. “Did I do something?”
“What? No,” Ventus says quickly. “It’s just… Today is the first time I’ve ever seen you look at yourself in a mirror willingly. It’s the first time I’ve seen you like yourself.”
Vanitas shuffles awkwardly. “Is that really such a big deal?”
“Vanitas,” Ventus says, moving closer to cup his face. “This is all I’ve ever wanted for you. All these years.”
There’s no way Vanitas can look Ventus in the eyes—it’s far too embarrassing. He averts his gaze somewhere to the left, something bubbling up inside him that he can barely control. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s there, more powerful than ever.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Ventus says, and Vanitas realizes that he’s now the one who’s about to cry. “Come here. It’s okay.”
When Ventus wraps his arms around him, Vanitas resists for a moment before he remembers the binder; Ventus won’t be able to feel anything he shouldn’t. So he relaxes and lets Ventus hold him close, their bodies pressed together and almost equal.
“This is stupid. You have to stop saying things that make me cry,” he mutters into the crook of Ventus’s neck. “It’s annoying.”
Ventus’s snort ruffles Vanitas’s hair. “I’m not trying to make you cry. I’m just… really happy that you’re finally letting me in.”
Vanitas grunts and shrugs. The idea of vulnerability has never stopped scaring him, but he has to admit that it truly does feel so much better now that Ventus knows his secret. No longer does he have to worry about it accidentally coming out or about what Ventus’s reaction might be—it was good and it’s still good, and that’s what matters.
“Yeah, I know,” Ventus says, and somehow, Vanitas knows he does.
It may not be in a perfect way, but he does, and that’s what counts.
“Do you want to sleep in our room again?” Ventus asks later that evening as they’re laying in bed together. “This bed is pretty cramped. I mean, not that I mind being pressed up together, but—I wasn’t sure.”
Our room. Those words mean the world to Vanitas. Ventus has spent the whole day affirming his feelings for Vanitas, but a small part of Vanitas has been constantly fretting over whether he’d ruined things by pushing Ventus away—but he obviously didn’t.
“Yeah. Our room,” Vanitas says, and Ventus lights up like the sun.
“Then let’s go!”
As they walk down the hallway, Ventus slips his hand into Vanitas’s, saying nothing at all. Vanitas squeezes and Ventus does so in return, the only affirmation that they need right now. Things are okay.
Once they’ve arrived, Ventus hands Vanitas an oversized T-shirt and a pair of comfortable shorts. “Here. Pajamas,” he explains, and then he hesitates for a moment before continuing. “So, everything I’ve read says that you’re not supposed to wear a binder to sleep… It can harm you.”
Vanitas clutches the clothes to his chest as if they can hide what Ventus can’t even see right now. “Oh,” he says. “I—oh.”
Ventus looks as uncomfortable as Vanitas feels. “I’m sorry. It’s just… well, I know you’ve slept in your dark suit for years, but I’m not sure the same logic works here. Better safe than sorry…?”
“Don’t apologize,” Vanitas says. “I…”
Part of him suddenly regrets agreeing to sleep in the same bed as Ventus again—but the thought of going back to sleeping without him makes him feel almost as panicked as the thought of revealing himself. He has to weigh the options.
One thing Vanitas has dealt with a lot in his life is harm—how much worse could a piece of fabric hurt him than a fist or a weapon? He spent years sleeping within the confines of his dark suit, so theoretically it should be fine… but on the other hand, it feels freeing in a conflicting sort of way to not have his chest bound. The idea of someone seeing is scary, but the prospect of a night of being able to breathe as deeply as he wants is tempting.
“Promise you won’t look until I’m under the blankets,” Vanitas says softly. He trusts Ventus. Of course he does. And he knows without a doubt that if he tells Ventus not to look, he won’t.
Ventus turns around instantly, just as expected. “Promise,” he answers. “Just tell me when.”
“Alright,” Vanitas murmurs, turning away as well.
They fall into silence as they both get dressed for bed. Vanitas manages with some difficulty to pull the binder off on his own, steadfastly not looking down at his chest the whole time, and quickly slips into the shirt and shorts. Then he crawls into bed first and pulls the blankets up to his collarbone.
“Okay. You can come now,” he tells Ventus, staring at his back across the room.
When Ventus turns around, he just stares at Vanitas for a few moments. Vanitas draws the blanket up even higher, until it’s tucked right up beneath his chin. “Ven?”
“Yeah. Sorry,” Ventus says, shaking his head as he walks over to the bed.
Vanitas feels relieved when Ventus very pointedly doesn’t look down while he gets himself situated as well, and then they’re left facing each other. The room is dark, but they’re so close that Vanitas can still see the vulnerable, wanting expression Ventus is wearing.
“Hey, Vanitas,” Ventus whispers, slowly lifting one hand and pressing it to Vanitas’s face. “I… Can I…”
“Can you what?” Vanitas answers, just as quiet.
Ventus’s eyes rove over Vanitas’s face as he rubs his thumb over the apple of his cheek. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“What?” Vanitas says, sounding more on edge than he means to.
Ventus blinks, and then it’s as if he comes back to himself all at once. “Can I spoon you?” he asks—and suddenly the heavy moment is gone.
Deep inside, Vanitas knows that wasn’t the question Ventus was originally going to ask, but he doesn’t push it because whatever it is, he probably isn’t ready for it. Too much has happened today and the past couple of weeks—he needs normalcy. Something calm and steady.
He doesn’t respond verbally, only rolling over onto his other side. As soon as he settles, Ventus moves up behind him until every part of them is pressed together. He puts his hand on Vanitas’s stomach, and Vanitas freezes when he realizes how little movement it would take for Ventus to feel the fullness of his chest, free of compression.
“It’s just me,” Ventus murmurs. “I’m keeping my hand right here. Don’t worry.”
For the second time that day, Vanitas has to mentally work himself over the wave of panic that’s threatening to crest within him. Ventus would never do anything you don’t want, he tells himself. You can trust him. Always and forever.
Once again Ventus is the first to fall asleep, but unlike the prior night, Vanitas follows him soon after, long before the sun is rising.