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Rei's suit was beyond saving, he idly mused about it. The whir of the car Kazuki had scrounged up was funky as characteristic of him. As the wheels ate up the distance, his flesh sagged against the seat. It could be relief, the noose of his family's heritage gone at last or it could just be the blood loss.
He exhales, a quiet thing, as he imagined Kazuki's worry if he were to share his concerns with him. Kazuki's administrations would hold and although Rei had been adamant about speeding to the daycare at once, he did appreciate Kazuki's obstinate demand to pull over and treat the gushing wound.
Kazuki's eyes were fixed on the road, his features pensive when Rei spies him in his periphery. The way the blond gets when he assumes no one's looking. Not a joke at hand or a charming grin pulling his lips up. Rei feels it too. Kazuki's worries about Miri, the future weighing on them, fogging up the claustrophobic confines of the vehicle. Rei supposes it could have been borne from the strange parenting instinct that has creeped up on him without his knowing in the past months. He couldn't confirm for the years before that, Rei has learned to shadow Kazuki.
Rei eats when Kazuki does. Rei deigns to put away dirty clothes because Kazuki would nag at him. He drags himself to his bathtub for another restless night because Kazuki stresses about the importance of sleep. He learned to crawl out of that tub and face the distressing morning and the life that lay beyond that door because Kazuki would be out there too.
Cooking or cleaning or moping, feeling sorry for himself. Kazuki has become an unshakeable part of his existence that Rei honestly wouldn't know how to live if the man were to cease to exist. Kazuki's worries have become his own, his delight, his exhaustion, his dreams were all that Rei had learned to pick up. And, ridiculously, Kazuki had ostensibly picked up Rei's burdens to carry. The man was after all sporting two bullet wounds and a number of nasty bruises in their 'talk' with Rei's father–Boss after all.
Some circumstances still didn't make sense to Rei. He didn't care much for anything outside conditioning his body and mind to kill and employing them to carry out what it was intended for by his Boss–father. Even with Kazuki, he hadn't meant to. Not really yet he picked up patterns and appropriate responses.
Don't slam doors because they make Kazuki flinch. Don't litter because Kazuki has little to no control over his life and aspires to make it up by controlling what goes on in the little space they've come to call home. Lower the volume of his games at night. Break sound barriers during rainstorms. Rei observed, learned and applied. Sometimes.
It wasn't until Miri that he attempted to ask why and how. Why is this the way it is? And, how can he make it last in case it's positive or remove any possibility of the event reoccurring if it is not?
He knew it all here, now, in the battered up car that he's surprised Boss had kept in his sprawling estate. The two of them nursing bullet wounds and bruises, on their flesh and beyond. He knew the what and why. He couldn't quite decipher the how. Past data had suggested that Kazuki had reacted well to companionship in his lows. Even through Kazuki's incessant complaints about the couch being dirtied beyond repair with food crumbs and cigarette smoke, Rei had found that the man had wormed his way onto his. Carving himself a space as easily as he had done in Rei's life. They had wasted hours at a time, in front of mindless television, lost in their past and unwilling to face the present. The future had been an absurd joke neither ever bothered to entertain.
Rei, at present, leaned back in his seat. He makes himself as comfortable as his injuries would allow. Kazuki has treated the worst of them and Rei will last as long as the blond keeps him around to be with Miri. Being in a moving vehicle, an arm's length apart applies as an appropriate response to their circumstances right? He was close. There isn't much he could do.
Or, perhaps not. Kazuki keeps teaching Rei. Rei startles, demonstrated only by the hitch in his breath. There, and gone, unlike the fingers snaking through his own. Kazuki's hand lies on top of Rei's lap, his fingers clutching onto his pale ones slowly but surely losing its capability for mobility. Rivulets of blood escape the gauze and run down the length of his numbing arm to stain Kazuki's fingers.
Rei is thrown back to a memory of loyalty oaths being made, the cold press of a blade against his palm and his then detached thoughts about the vitiated process. He'd always thought slicing the forearm would be a better option for it would be easier to stopper the blood flow in comparison the palm and its abundance of blood vessels.
He is jarred back to reality with a near indiscernible squeeze to his dulling hand. The reality that was a hand in his own, unwilling to let go, breathing warmth into his very soul. With excruciating difficulty, he willed his fingers to work. The phalanges that had curved around the trigger guard with ease struggling to learn the art of being soft. He coaxes his fingers to twitch enough to curve around Kazuki's.
He turns to the window, spying a smile on his reflection. Small and undeniably fond and odd. His eyes dart to Kazuki's handsome profile challenging the foliage they were passing through. The same worry lined his eyebrows and drew his lips down but there was a softness to him that Rei has grown accustomed to. Past data indicated that this meant Kazuki was certain in the marrow of his bones that things would be alright. Life or death missions, disarming bombs, packing Miri's bentos. Challenging circumstances but they would rise up. They would be happy.
Rei let his eyes droop. It would be alright. If Kazuki believes it, then so did he.