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What sticks with Sinclair—of all things, and there are many, there are worse—isn’t the blood, or the screaming, or the sick twist of déjà vu crawling up his spine like a centipede— it’s the fact that it brought him back to the kitchen light of his childhood. That pale yellow, jaundiced overhead bulb buzzing above his mother’s head like a fading halo.
His mother was not a cruel woman. Neither was she warm. She was meticulous. And she was scared, though she rarely admitted it.
The clink of her fork against porcelain, the hiss of the stovetop when nothing was cooking anymore, the way she’d slice her own dinner into meticulous squares and then just push it around with the edge of her fork — these are the things Sinclair remembers. Not the conversations. Not the hugs. Just the sound of the house not quite knowing what to do with itself. Not ever since they got the prosthetics.
And Sinclair, a young boy with hands that always trembled (especially at the table), learned how to make his stomach smaller. How to quiet it.
His mother was a beautiful woman. And sometimes, beauty looks like stillness. Like absence. Like silence with too much meaning packed inside it, so tightly that any attempt to speak tears the whole thing open.
He sees that now. Sees it in Ryoshu, too, sometimes. In the angles of her jaw and the way her eyes glow like dying stars in the shadows. In the way she says so little and means so much more.
And right now, she is not here. That is what makes the quiet in his room unbearable.
It was supposed to help.
Drawing her always helps. The curve of her wrist, the slouch of her shoulders, the sharp, knowing look she gives without even glancing up from her cigarette or blade or whatever it is she's paying attention to. He’d sketched her a thousand times. Thousands. The feel of pencil on paper is usually enough to keep the worst of it at bay. But today, the graphite drags wrong. His fingers twitch, his breath stutters out in shallow, uneven puffs. His hand refuses to cooperate, and her likeness — always elusive, always more her in absence than in form— refuses to emerge.
He can’t get her eyes right. He never gets her eyes right.
The corner of the page creases under his wrist. His elbow jerks.
And the page tears.
"N-no, no no no —"
He’s on his knees before he realizes he’s slid off his bed. Fingers scrabbling at the ripped paper like he can undo it with enough desperation. He can feel his heart galloping in his throat, in his temples, in the twitch of his left eyelid.
This page. This sketch. This was the one with her looking away. The one where she almost smiled at him.
It’s ruined.
His breath curls up into his nose. Too shallow. Too fast. He presses the heel of his hand against his sternum, willing it to stop.
"J-just breathe. S—S...stop it, just. A stupid sketch. You’re f-fine, it’s fine —"
His mouth feels dry. His eyes burn. He doesn’t cry. He hasn't been crying that much lately. He just shudders, spine curling like paper on a stovetop, dry and tight and brittle.
His fingers graze the edge of the dresser.
There. The corner of a soft blue pack. Shoved by his books, where she always leaves them.
Backup. Back up. Backup backup backup, she’d said last time with that tone he almost calls fond.
They weren’t speaking right now. She grows distant at random times. He just knows she’s not here right now. And she always comes here, after. Always lights one of those thin, vicious little things and watches the smoke curl up into the air like it's calling for her. And afterwards, always lets him breathe it in secondhand, lets him pretend the smell on his sheets is her and not the nicotine.
He isn’t supposed to touch them. That was the unspoken rule.
But she’s not here. And he’s losing it.
He pulls the pack from the crevice. Hands shaking.
Flick.
A single cigarette slides halfway out.
He stares at it like it might scold him.
"Ryoshu… if I’m not... I just — I just want to…"
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t light it.
Not yet.
He goes out to the main area and finds her seat, even though the cold air bites hard at his exposed arms.
He holds the unlit cigarette between his fingers.
He doesn't belong in Ryoshu's seat.
Sinclair knows this the same way he knows not to touch the blade she leaves sheathed beside her pillow, or the way her candles are stacked just barely out of order but mean something in the way they're all arranged. He knows it the way you know you shouldn't bite into something beautiful because it might bite back.
But here he is. Knees pulled up, back slouched against the cool curve of the bus seat. Her seat. Still faintly warm. Still smelling like smoke and something sharp and clean beneath it. The unlit cigarette trembles between his fingers. He flicks his lighter once, twice—on the third try, the flame catches.
It sizzles. The paper darkens at the tip. His lips part, and the smoke enters wrong.
He coughs.
Chokes.
Folds in half, tears threading hot down his cheeks.
It burns like shame. Like reverence. Like wanting something he can't name and doesn't deserve.
He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and tries again. The taste is acrid, chemical, ruinous.
It tastes like her.
Like her mouth after a long mission, when she's too tired to speak and too wired to sleep, and the only thing between them is her breath, hot and bitter and curling into his lungs like a promise. Like surrender. Like punishment.
He holds the cigarette like he knows she would. Two fingers, wrist loose, mouth parted like he's about to say her name but can't.
Can't.
Instead, he flips open the sketchbook balanced on his knees.
Page after page. Ryoshu, Ryoshu, Ryoshu. Each one a different version of her. Smirking. Sleeping. Frowning into the page like she knows he's watching. Bent over a blade. Bent over him.
Some are raw. Shameful. Private.
Some he only draws after. When his mouth is sore and his thighs are bruised and she's asleep against his side, arm flung over his scratched and bruised ribs like she owns him. Like he's nothing but a drawing she made real.
The kind of pictures that make his throat close up when he remembers she knows. That she—
"You're doing it wrong."
He jolts.
The cigarette drops from his fingers, nearly burning his shirt, but two fingers pluck it free before it can fall.
She's there.
Standing over him, black-on-black pajamas as usual, hair mussed, eyes glinting with quiet displeasure. Or amusement. He can never tell. She's inscrutable like that. Like a painting he doesn't have the colors to finish.
"R-Ryoshu—" he starts, voice hoarse.
"Quiet."
She slides into the seat beside him without asking. Like she never left. This is her place after all and he just happens to be in it.
Sinclair goes still.
She doesn't say anything else. Just takes the cigarette, turns it over in her fingers, then presses it between her own lips and draws in.
Slow. Smooth. Effortless.
He watches the shape of her mouth. The way her chest rises. The faint flare of ember.
She doesn't hand it back.
He doesn't ask.
Instead, she reaches for the sketchbook.
He flinches.
But he doesn't stop her.
The pages whisper against her fingers. Flip. Flip. Flip.
He watches her eyes trace each one. No change in expression. No sharp inhale. No smirk. Just calm. Measured. Peaceful, even.
She pauses on one he remembers drawing in the dark. Her sprawled out, back arched, hair like ink spilled over sheets. Her mouth parted around his name.
She closes the book.
Sets it gently on her lap before looking to the opposite of his direction.
Smoke unfurls from her lips.
Silence.
It stretches long between them. Not heavy. Not tense. Just there.
Sinclair breathes it in. The quiet. The closeness. Her smoke and her stillness and the faint press of her thigh against his.
He doesn’t know what she’s thinking.
But for once, he doesn’t need to.
For once, it's enough to just sit beside her and not speak.
To let her hold the cigarette and the silence.
"Do you always draw stuff like that after P.A.S.S.I.O.N.?" she said suddenly.
Sinclair flushed at the question.
No—he burned. Skin lit from the inside, red curling down his throat like shame and blood were the same color, same heat, same weight tugging at the base of his stomach. Ryoshu had his sketchbook closed on her lap still, one long-fingered hand draped over it, the other resting on the bench beside her with the cigarette. She wasn't even looking at him, really—her gaze was on the edge of the seat across from them, eyes seemed faintly narrowed, mouth crooked like something had amused her and then promptly disgusted her. He's not quite sure what kind of expression she could be making.
"I—" Sinclair started, then stopped, because his voice cracked like a boy’s, and wasn’t that appropriate?
He wanted to look away too. Wanted to lunge out of the bus window. Wanted to crawl into the sketchbook and disappear into the shaky pencil lines of her spine arched against sheets, her face half-buried in the pillow he'd shaded with aching care.
She flipped the sketchbook open again, casual. The pages whispered. He could see the shape of the drawing, even at this angle: legs bent, the low curve of her back, the open V of her thighs. The suggestion of a mouth parted around a moan.
"You shaded my thighs," Ryoshu said, soft and analytical. "But not your hand."
He swallowed, because that was true, and he hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out. His fingers had just barely touched the edge of the page, but her knees were there, detailed and flushed and so precisely bent it made his gut twist. He hadn't drawn himself except as a ghost.
"I didn't think about it much."
"You did. Just didn't realize"
She said it without looking up. Then she closed the sketchbook, as gently as if tucking away an injured bird, and passed it to him with the cigarette she took from him. Her fingertips brushed his as he took them. Too hot. Too cold. Something else entirely.
"You've got S.K.I.L.L.," Ryoshu murmured. "In a passionate and perverted kind of way."
"S-sorry I—"
Her mouth twitched. "It's a compliment."
“Still I s—shouldn’t draw this kind of—”
The silence that followed was somehow louder than before. Night outside clawed at the windows.
She stood.
Or tried to.
Because the moment her hand left the bench, Sinclair's fingers closed around her wrist without thought, without permission. Her eyes flicked to him, sharp, but she didn’t pull away. He was already murmuring something without realizing it.
"I'm sorry."
The words caught in his throat, choked themselves. He wasn't sure what exactly he was apologizing for—the sketch, the implication, for pulling her back to him. For drawing her the way he remembered, instead of how she was. For needing her in that moment more than she seemed to need him.
He leaned forward. Rested his cheek against her arm.
Her skin was cool, even now. Through her coat, the scent of old cigarettes and candles beneath it.
"I'm sorry," he said again, quieter.
And what he meant was: I'm sorry I can't stop wanting you. I'm sorry I turn you into art every time you're in the room. I'm sorry I remember what your breath sounds like when you're pressed against the wall. I'm sorry I can't stop drawing the way your eyes roll back when you come. I'm sorry I drew you like it's my prayer. Like you were holy. Like you were mine.
Ryoshu didn’t answer. But her free hand came up. Rested on his head for just a second—not quite a pet, not quite a push.
Then she sat back down beside him, very slowly.
"Idiot," she said eventually.
He could live with that.