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"You can't save everyone," Keigo's voice feels louder than it should, pushing past the rushing of blood in your ears as you stand and stare at the scene in front of you.
"Fuck you," is all you respond with. It was supposed to be harsh, but there's a tired breathiness to your voice that you can't shake. He doesn't hold it against you.
"Dove? Hey - look at me. It wasn't your fault," Keigo says firmly, tearing one of his gloves off to gently cup your face in his hand, trying to ground you and get you to listen.
The lights of the police cars bathe his face in blue, then red, then blue again, and the sirens wail loudly enough that they almost drown out the voice of a woman crying - a woman who just lost someone she loved because you couldn't get to them in time.
"The press is waiting for me," you say in lieu of addressing anything real. Keiog's eyes flit over your face wildly.
"I'll make a statement for you."
"I don't think that's how it works."
"It is today." He doesn't give you much time to argue it, leaving you in the hands of the paramedics who need to check you over while he makes his way over to the swarming press. He's worried about you - desperately so. He's never seen you like this - not in the short time that you've been together and certainly not before that, when the two of you were merely rivals, competitors on a public stage.
There's a thrumming under Keigo's skin, a burning sort of itch that ignites him as he waves down the swarm of press, angling it all away from you. It's this need he has to take care of you, to use his hands for something good. He wonders, in a sort of panic, if this is what love feels like. Fortunately, he doesn't really have the time to think about it.
By the time he gets back to you, you're sitting in the back of the ambulance, a never-ending back and forth of the paramedic laying a shock blanket over your shoulders and you shrugging it off playing before his eyes. An assistant from your agency is talking to you, frowning and shifting on her feet as she types away on her tablet and you stare vaguely past her.
"Hey, you," Keigo says gently when he gets to you. He almost feels bad about pushing past your assistant, about moving in front of her so that he can lean down to look at you - but the way you look at him, through him, changes his mind. "You all cleared?"
"They couldn't find anything wrong with me," is how you answer, and Keigo finds himself relieved to know you so well, to be able to parse the jumble of words that have your assistant humming in confusion and tapping her nails against her tablet.
They couldn't find anything wrong with me, and Keigo can almost hear the part that you didn't say. The problem is just me. There's nothing to explain it, nothing to justify it. It's just me .
"It wasn't your fault," he says again, like it'll make some kind of difference. Somewhere in the background, a police officer pushes the crowd back and your hands twitch in your lap. "You did everything you could."
"I don't think that matters," you shake your head, moving it like it'll rattle out the memories of today. "It wasn't enough."
"It has to be," Keigo says, and he surprises himself with the earnest tilt to his voice. It has to be, because it's all we're capable of. Because I can't lose you to this the way that I've lost myself .
"And what happens when it's not?" You fire back, and Keigo would be relieved at the light that's starting to come back to your eyes if the question didn't catch him so off guard, if he had some kind of answer to give you - to give himself.
"That's…" he starts, and when he catches his reflection in the ambulance window, he has to stop himself from flinching. "That's something that we have to figure out, I guess," he finishes haltingly. Something in you softens, brings you back to where you should be as you watch his wild eyes flit around, the way his wings twitch nervously against his back as he shifts and stands taller.
He's never dealt with this, you remind yourself. It's not that he's never been here, been the one to fail , but he's never really dealt with it before. Maybe you can't expect him to be able to deal with it for you when you can't.
"It's ok, Hawks," you say gently, and a pointed look at the assistant still hovering has her stepping back, clearing her throat and announcing that she has to make a call before she disappears around the side of the ambulance. You reach forward, letting your fingers brush against Keigo's clenched fist while he stares at you.
How am I supposed to look at you, he thinks. How am I supposed to be anything to you when I can't even be anything for myself? Your hand brushes against his and he wills his fist to unfurl, lets you tug off his glove so that you can intertwine your fingers with his and feel skin on skin.
It's almost like I'm human , his brain supplies weakly. It's almost like I'm something real and worth touching.
"Love -" he starts, his voice lurching as he looks at you. You , sitting in the back of an ambulance with a blanket draped over your shoulders, another fight that you couldn't win today, and he's panicking and spiralling and pulling away. The police lights flash around you, blue and then red and then blue again - but Keigo's frame blocks the light from you, lets you look up at him in the unwavering white light of the back of the ambulance. He wonders, in a panicked sort of way, what else he's sheltered you from. As you pull his arm forward to plant a delicate kiss to the inside of his wrist, he wonders if this shield of his is really such a good thing.
What sort of light am I keeping from you , he thinks. What sort of love am I hiding in the dark?
"Keigo," the name is whispered so softly against the soft skin of his inner wrist - so quietly that he can feel your lips moving more than he can hear it. Any other time, he'd be tempted to chide you for using his name where others could hear. Now, though, it feels like too much of a blessing to be known for him to want to complain.
He says your name in return and a police siren wails loudly. He almost feels like he's human. You almost look like you are, too.
"I think it's time to go home," you say gently, and the weariness in your voice has him wiggling his wrist out of your grip to step closer to you and hold your face in his palms, eyeing the fatigue in your eyes and the slump of your shoulders.
Home , he thinks, hears the word with a rattling sort of clarity as you reach up to cup your hands over his where they hold your face. There is somewhere to call home for us, after all.
Maybe you need to be reminded of it, too. Maybe that's where that layer of desperation in your voice comes from. Keigo tugs you up, pulling the blanket off your shoulders and tucking you under his wing, instead, and you find yourself a bit closer to home already.