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It was almost a whole year since that day. Memories of it, of what Mafuyu had seen that horrible afternoon, still threatened to haunt his vacant thoughts whenever he spaced out for too long. Ever since, visiting Yuuki had been a common occurrence.
The thing was, he'd always come alone.
It was just easier that way - easier to stare at the name of somebody who had once held him, kissed him, loved him engraved into a dull grey stone in a field when it was just him and his own thoughts to occupy the empty, lifeless space. No matter how many times he'd read that name, eyes flicking between the two years below the headline as if the fact that a life could be that short was still impossible for him to comprehend, it was still so much easier to read it alone.
Maybe that was why he was so nervous, then, feeling another hand holding his own as he walked past the other gravesites towards that specific one he knew the location of perfectly. Third row on the left, two spaces over.
Even if Ritsuka had been well-meaning with this proposition, he was still scared. Scared that this sweetheart of a boyfriend, the same person who had found a way to carve a place for real emotions into Mafuyu's silent heart, would awaken a grief the redhead had never even processed. He never learned to, only how to numb himself to the pain of it. But who knew, maybe he'd already learned how to do that, long before he'd even met Yuuki, as nothing more than a little child who "learned" to be quiet just like his mother. He had been quiet because as he learned, he was to be quiet, or there were consequences.
Be quiet, or you'll make it all worse.
That was the truth Mafuyu believed in for as long as he'd known how to tell between a circle and a square. A truth that was slowly but surely becoming obscure, forgotten, the more that Ritsuka taught him otherwise.
So, yes. Satou Mafuyu was scared.
For once, he wasn't sure if he could be quiet.
"This one, right?" asked a gentle voice, breaking Mafuyu out of his nervous thoughts. A silent nod was his only response. Blue eyes lingered on brown for a beat longer than normal, but otherwise this answer was accepted, and Ritsuka guided the both of them down onto the well-kept grass. While the couple's bodies separated from the time being, a point was made that their hands were kept intertwined. Mafuyu was grateful for this.
Quiet descended upon them, interrupted only by the occasional, distant warble of a nearby bird as words seemed to fail Mafuyu - he'd never really spoken whenever he was here - while simultaneously being set carefully aside by Ritsuka. The taller carefully squeezed the smaller hand encased in his own, a reminder of his presence. Nobody was alone here, not anymore.
"...it's been a while," the redhead managed in a soft voice moments later, his voice sounding a bit more weak than he had remembered it sounding before. And oh - the grass and gravestone suddenly blurred into a combined silhouette, followed by the feeling of dampness on Mafuyu's cheeks. Was he...?
Before he could stiffen and attempt to brush away the evidence, a thumb gently glided over his cheekbone, wiping away those tears, which only seemed to come back in greater numbers the moment they'd been eradicated. Soon this motion was given up and a pair of arms wrapped themselves around the singer's slender frame, holding him even more tenderly than they ever had before.
"Don't worry. Just let it happen," Ritsuka soothed, welcoming the way Mafuyu leaned against him. He knew how precarious this situation was, and how hard it must be for his boyfriend - to have to see nothing more than a slab of stone in the ground when just a year ago, the very person buried underneath had been a phone call away at most.
Though easing his boyfriend's pain was his main priority, Ritsuka was still aware of the heartache he felt in himself. Knowing that who he was visiting was the one who had first stolen his love's heart, who had been Mafuyu's first in almost every sense of the word, was a hard pill to swallow. He wasn't the first to love Mafuyu, and he knew full well that Mafuyu wasn't entirely done with Yuuki. Ritsuka didn't blame him, of course. How could he?
But even if wiping away tears caused by a previous lover of his own lover felt like wielding a double-edged sword, the guitarist was determined to leave here having alleviated - even if just a little bit - any pain still harbored within Mafuyu in regard to the death of Yuuki. After all, Ritsuka had made it his own personal mission to fix what had been broken the moment he laid eyes on that boy months ago and fell for his puppy-dog eyes, and he wasn't going to leave anything broken the way it was. Be it a guitar string or a heart, Uenoyama Ritsuka was determined to fix anything of Mafuyu's that he brought to him, no matter what it took, and he was going to hold his hand the whole way through.
Mafuyu soon calmed down enough to stop crying, but not enough to let the emotion slip away entirely the way he wanted to. In fact, he held on to it, finding that letting those tears run down his face felt infinitely better than keeping still, burying everything down so deep it felt easy to swim to the bottom where he had lingered for so long, indulging in the feeling of numbness.
This moment was enough to let him realize that he was done being numb. He was going to come to peace like he'd wanted to from the start, even if he had to have his hand held every step of the way.
With a small, shaky smile - the most genuine one Mafuyu had ever smiled when facing what he was now - he managed one more thing, breaking the silence with his words.
"Happy birthday, Yuuki."