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Suo screams when he sees Nirei in the grasp of the KEEL’s leader.
Though “scream” wouldn’t be the most accurate description, because the noise that tears itself from his throat is animalistic. It sends a shudder down the spines of everyone present, the sound somewhere between that which an injured beast makes when cornered, and a terrified prey when knowing it is minutes from death.
When Nirei is grabbed by the hair and pulled up like a farm animal being presented for slaughter, Suo loses himself. He blinks and between one moment and the next he is being dragged backwards by someone, yelling indistinct words in his ears.
There is blood on his fists. There is blood on his cheeks and—it’s warm. He can taste it on his lips from where it’s dripped down his face.
It isn’t his. He knows that.
The person trying to stop him is prying open his other hand, which he can feel is grasped vaguely around some sort of fabric. He blinks to bring it into focus. It’s the collar of a KEEL jacket, and he follows the white fabric with his eyes to track it to the face of the person wearing it. It belongs to a boy who has blood covering his face, one eye swollen shut and the other closed from unconsciousness.
“—uo! Suo. He’s down. You can drop him,” the voice beside him snaps back into clarity like the bang of a discharged gun. It takes a moment to place it, but he recognises it as Sakura’s voice.
Suo drops the unconscious KEEL member. He goes to clasp his hands together behind his back to hide the way they’re trembling, but the blood on it is half-dried and sticky. Even the idea of smearing it further by accident causes an inadvertent shiver of disgust, so he just holds them by his sides and straightens his back.
“Did you need something, Sakura-kun?”
Sakura stops. Suo doesn’t tilt his head to behold the expression Sakura’s wearing, keeping his body carefully positioned just enough to block the view of Sakura’s face.
“You…” Sakura trails off. He abandons whatever he was going to say in favour of, “That blonde guy’s waiting for you upstairs. We’re still cleaning up down here, but you took out most of the strongest fighters.”
He pauses again.
“...thanks. I know you didn’t do it for us or whatever, but we only managed to make it to where KEEL’s leader was cuz of all the people you took down.”
It’s the least straightforward and most sincere attempt at reassurance that Suo’s ever received.
“Thank you, Sakura-kun,” he says, trying to shape his voice into something more genuine, more pleasant, but it’s evident he fails from the way Sakura winces.
“Just—go to your boy,” Sakura tells him.
Suo doesn’t need to be told twice.
When he climbs up the stairs, it’s while taking two steps at a time and unheeding of breaking his usual unbothered persona. He flinches at the final step, almost draws back, but pushes ahead regardless.
Nirei has drawn himself into a tight ball in a corner, arms wrapped around his legs and face buried into his knees. His hood is tugged over his head such that his yellow eyes peek out from under them, focused solely on the top of the stairs that Suo emerges from.
Those eyes snap up to meet Suo’s now, wide and terrified and so very, very young.
They pull Suo forward incessantly, a feeling Suo follows like a ghost trailing after its own corpse. He stumbles towards Nirei, footsteps unstable, and drops to his knees before him.
“Aki?” he says, his own voice sounding small.
Nirei peers out at him, blinking slowly. Slowly, tears start gathering in his eyes like snow building up in winter.
“I thought—” he chokes. “—I wasn’t sure if this was a dream. Is this real, Hayato?”
Nirei speaks Suo’s given name like a prayer. Suo answers, a built-in instinct in response to the sound of his name in Nirei’s voice.
“I’m here, Aki,” he says like a promise. “This is real. I swear it.”
Nirei melts. It’s like he was a wind-up toy whose key was being turned, compressing his spring tighter and tighter, and hearing Suo’s confirmation released all of that pent-up tension. He uncurls himself, letting one knee hit the floor and balancing himself with a hand so he’s in a half-crouched position.
“Hayato,” Nirei starts, but stops like he doesn’t know what else to say. Not that Suo minds, really, because he would be quite happy to hear Nirei say nothing apart from his own name for the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry,” Suo fills the silence with instead. He knows it’s uncharacteristic of him—not to apologise, because he does that frequently—but to apologise and sound like he actually means it. “I couldn’t save you. I didn’t even know what you were going through.”
Nirei opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but Suo cuts him off with, “And…when I finally did, I lost control. I’m sorry.”
He confesses what he did like admitting to a sin, laying it bare before the boy he loves like a sacrifice. Nirei frowns, a severe expression unsuitable for his otherwise soft face, and Suo braces himself.
“You did nothing wrong, Hayato. If anything, I should be the one who’s sorry. I made you and your classmates come all the way here to fight on behalf of an outsider…and look at you.”
Nirei is gentle when he lifts a hand to cradle the side of Suo’s face. The touch of his fingers burns, soft in the way they brush against his cheek, and Suo has to suppress a shiver.
“You got injured for me. I’m so sorry, Hayato.”
Suo raises his own hand, making to grasp Nirei’s with it, but the way the dried blood cracks when his skin stretches with the movement reminds him of how it’s bloodied and filthy. His hand hovers over Nirei’s awkwardly, wanting to touch but fearing his dirty hands will stain Nirei’s clean ones.
Nirei doesn’t hesitate. He removes his hand from Suo’s face, making him miss the contact instantly, but the loss is satiated when Nirei grabs Suo’s hand right after.
“My hands—” Suo blurts out, heart racing. “They’re bloody. You shouldn’t touch them.”
“They’re bloody because of me. If anything, I share as much blame as you do,” Nirei replies, eyes directed downwards. From this angle, his eyelashes look painfully pretty, so much so that Suo wants to reach out and brush his fingers against them.
Suo wants to say something, anything, whether it be words of reassurement or more self-condemnation, but a familiar voice calls for them from downstairs.
“Hey! We’re done down here, let’s go!” Sakura shouts.
Suo laces his fingers with Nirei’s. The brown-red smudges onto both their skins, but Nirei doesn’t seem bothered by it. The way their hands slot together is natural by now, slipping into place like matching puzzle pieces after years of holding hands as children.
“Let’s go,” he murmurs, just loud enough for Nirei to hear. Nirei’s mouth tightens, lips pressing together, but he nods once sharply.
The class politely refrains from commenting on their linked hands when they come down the stairs, though Sakura inhales sharply and turns his head away. There’s a dash of pink on his ears when Suo looks closer.
Suo tugs on Nirei’s hand gently to lead him forward, stepping carefully around the bodies strewn around. He deliberately avoids looking down so he doesn’t have to see the wreckage he left in the wake of his rampage, his heartbeat thudding in his ears. Nirei, as if reading his mind, squeezes his hand softly.
When they cross the threshold of KEEL’s base and into the warmth of the setting sun, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Suo both hears and feels Nirei’s sigh of relief and the way any remaining tension bleeds from the shorter boy’s frame.
He bids his class goodbye in short order, dodging knowing glances from classmates who let him leave, knowing he’s vibrating on his feet to be alone with Nirei. Sakura in particular blushes when he passes, murmuring a hurried if not surprisingly sincere farewell. There’s an itch that surfaces under his skin at being known like this, but he ignores it in favour of the feeling of Nirei’s hand in his own.
Before he realises it, Suo is walking to the same playground the two of them used to play in as kids.
The first time they met, it was in this very playground. Suo just happened to pass by when he heard shouting. It was sheer curiosity that made him follow the sound to find a brown-haired kid curled up and surrounded by a circle of kids heckling and taking turns hitting him.
Suo wasn’t a hero, had never been a hero, and believed that he would never be a hero, but something pulled him towards the group. He made short work of the bullies, making sure to hit them enough to scare them into scattering, but so lightly that no visible marks were left for them to snitch.
After helping Nirei up and treating his wounds, the other boy shyly pulled out a notebook and asked Suo questions about himself. He told Suo how much of a hero he seemed, and how he wanted to learn more about Suo to become just like him. Not that he would ever admit this to another living soul, but Suo is still secretly proud that he’s the first person Nirei ever collected information on.
Nirei was the reason Suo even went to Furin. He wasn’t the hero type until Nirei showed him the warm and tingling sensation of being led, by the hand, into the light.
They sit down on the swings. Suo is close enough to touch Nirei if he reaches out his arm, but instead he stares unseeingly at the too-large distance between his shoes and Nirei’s.
Nirei speaks first. “You did nothing wrong, Hayato.”
Suo bites his tongue instead of his lip or the inside of his cheek because unlike the other two, it’s not externally visible. It’s an ingrained habit he’s had for years. The pain makes him focus and contemplate a response that won’t be snappish or antagonistic.
“I lost control,” he says finally. “That was my fault.”
Nirei purses his lips, thinking. “Fault does not equal to having done something wrong. Just because you bear the responsibility does not mean you consciously made the choice to carry out the wrong act.”
Suo almost laughs. That rebuttal was so very Nirei-like, a tad too analytical and objective for it to have come from anyone else. He knows, innately, that if it were anyone else Nirei was trying to comfort, Nirei would have taken a more subjective route. But, because it is Suo, Nirei knows to stick to facts and technicalities until he can ease Suo out of his self-blame.
“Maybe,” he allows. “But I’m still sorry. I should have had better control. I could have saved you in a better way.”
Nirei swings his legs casually, watching the soles of his feet brush the ground beneath the swings with every arc. “There’s no ‘better’ or ‘best’ way of saving someone. You saved me. How you did it doesn’t matter. Not to me, at least.”
Suo smiles, unbidden. Sometimes, Nirei shines as brightly as the sun. Even when Suo shuts his eyes and wallows in darkness, Nirei extends his hand and drags Suo into the sunlight.
Sometimes, he thinks that if it were Nirei saving him, he could be redeemed.
“...how long were you stuck with KEEL?” he asks.
Nirei’s eyes shutter. Suo nearly wants to retract his question, but he wants to know the answer. He needs to know how long he failed Nirei.
“A month,” Nirei tells him. The answering inhale from Suo is so sharp it sounds painful. His grip on the swing’s metal chain tightens until it hurts.
“But it wasn’t your fault.”
Nirei says this like a promise. Suo finds he wants to believe it, even though everything that Nirei went through was his fault. He can’t give in. He can’t allow himself to give in, so he turns to Nirei to tell him exactly that.
Suo doesn’t realise that the sun set until he sees the expanse of the night sky reflected in Nirei’s eyes. It seems the stars have descended from the heavens and embedded themselves amidst the brown pupils that look back at Suo now, curious. The sight steals the breath and the rebuttal right out of Suo’s mouth.
Like this, with stars both in the eyes of the boy he loves and scattered across the sky they sit beneath, with little popping explosions in his chest and the cool metal of the swing against his palm, Suo decides to forgive himself.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll trust in your words, Akihiko.”
He thinks he might be able to call himself a good person if Nirei says it.
Nirei smiles at him, sending butterflies fluttering in his stomach. He tilts his head back to gaze at the sky, his smile taking on a hint of melancholy.
“Anyway, it was my own fault for getting myself into that situation. I was stupid enough to fall for Natori’s lies, so I deserve what I got.”
When those terrible words leave Nirei’s mouth, Suo thinks he might cry. Not just because of what they mean, but because of the certainty they were said with. Nirei truly believed what he said.
“If there’s anyone to be blamed, it should be Natori,” Suo says firmly. “Not you. You weren’t the first to be tricked by him. You didn’t deserve any of what you went through.”
Nirei really does tear up at that. His nose crinkles and his brow furrows and his lips tremble, trying valiantly to hold back the sobs that rattle out of him. Suo reaches out instinctively, his hand wrapping around Nirei’s before he even realises what he’s doing. Nirei grips back, steady and tight but never rough or painful, and cries beneath the stars.
“How can you say those things about me?” Nirei asks, once his tears run dry and his sobs reduce to the occasional sniffle.
Suo squeezes Nirei’s hand. “Because they’re true.”
“But I can’t even defend myself. I can’t fight. I’m not strong at all.”
“You are strong. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You withstood all of KEEL’s torture. You’re always so warm to everyone you meet and you smile even during your hardest times. That requires strength that comes from the heart.”
Tears begin to trickle down Nirei’s face again. Suo fights the urge to wipe them away as Nirei begins to speak, “You know, back when Natori invited me to KEEL, I thought of you. I thought that maybe, if I joined a team like you, I could get stronger. Strong enough to stand by your side.”
Suo leans in, drawn by the cracks in Nirei’s voice. He gives in to the temptation and presses a soft kiss to Nirei’s temple.
“You were always strong enough to stand by my side, Aki.”