Archive of Our Own ^beta

i'm just a foreign faction,
irreconcilable conflict at parties
i feel like a chain reaction,
but sadly i don't know how it started

Kyo knocks twice on her bedroom door, and she quietly answers, "You can come in," and somehow he knows that it's all started to go to shit.

For once, he's standing in the hallway early enough that it's not suspicious. It's an hour after dinner. He could be there for any reason, one that doesn't involve hushed voices and clothes coming off—and in this case, he is. Tohru asked him if he wanted to do homework together, and he said yes. That should be the end of it.

Then again, a lot of things should've been the end of it.

Kyo hears a door open, but it's not Tohru's. It's the one next to hers.

Yuki pads out of his room holding an empty glass, looking way too comfortable in his pajamas. His expression is so neutral as their eyes meet, even though he can clearly see Kyo standing outside of Tohru's bedroom, about to walk inside and do god knows what all night.

Not that they're going to do anything tonight. That's not why Kyo is here. He's not.

But he knows that Yuki isn't stupid. And he's not deaf, either. He must know what's been going on, and there's no way he's neutral about that.

Yuki probably hates him as much as Kyo hates himself for it—

"Shut up," Kyo says.

"I didn't say anything, idiot."

"You didn't have to." Kyo shoves his hands into his pockets, his skin crawling. "And you don't have to stand guard outside her room either. Freak."

"I think you're the one who's been pacing in front of Honda-san's door, actually."

"I wasn't doing that," Kyo splutters. "It's a hallway, I'm just walking around… you're not the only one who lives here. And I'm not doing anything wrong, we're—we're just doing homework. What, is that not allowed anymore?"

Yuki stares at him, one brow raised. "Are you done yet?"

Kyo clenches his fist, not throwing a punch. He's losing his cool, and he needs to stop—Tohru can hear them. It upsets her when he fights with Yuki, and he's been upsetting her enough lately without adding this to the pile.

"Just fuck off, Rat."

Yuki rolls his eyes. "Gladly." He slips past Kyo and walks down the hallway. Kyo waits for the sound of stairs creaking, but then Yuki's footsteps pause.

"Kyo."

"What?" Kyo keeps his eyes on Tohru's bedroom door.

"You're free to act as you like… it's none of my business, anyway," Yuki says. "But if you hurt anyone in the process—"

"Shut up," Kyo snaps. "Don't do that. Don't talk about things that you don't know about."

"I'm not talking about anything I don't know. I live here, too." And Yuki's voice is so calm and collected like always, like he's making fun of Kyo.

Like he's better than him.

Kyo hears his footsteps as he descends down the stairs, and he waits for himself to yell in response, to see red, to march down after Yuki and talk with his fists—

But nothing comes out. The rage that Kyo expects never wells up. He fixates on a slight crack in the wood of Tohru's door, and he feels nothing but dread curling in his gut.

He feels ashamed of something he hasn't even done yet.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he turns the knob and walks into Tohru's room.

He's greeted with her blue nightshirt and the line of her back; she's turned away from the door, eyes fixed on the mirror that sits atop her dresser.

He sees her reflection over her shoulder. She's brushing her hair out—it trails over her shoulders messily, and it looks like it's still wet from the shower. Something about the image makes him feel twitchy.

She sets down her brush and looks over her shoulder at him. "Hi."

"Hey."

He tries to let her smile ease his mind. She turns back to the mirror and picks up one of her ribbons, making quick work of tying it into her hair. He tries to let it lull him into a false sense of security. He wants to believe that it's okay for him to be here, that this is normal and perfectly innocent. But he watches her slender fingers threading through her hair, wishes he could do the same with his own hands—

"I heard you talking to Yuki-kun outside," Tohru says. "Is everything okay?"

And he knows that he's fucked.

"It's fine," he says, looking away. "He was just being an ass."

"Kyo-kun…"

"I'm joking, okay? It really wasn't a big deal."

Tohru goes silent for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter. It reminds him of what she sounds like on the roof.

"He probably knows… don't you think?"

"About what."

He regrets looking back at Tohru then, a question that doesn't need to be asked. He sees her flushed face and frown reflected back at him in the mirror.

"Well, I just… since his room is next to mine…"

Somehow hearing her say it feels worse than Yuki bringing it up himself. It blurs the neat line in Kyo's mind that separates Tohru from messy.

"That's none of his business." Kyo's scratches at his neck, his face flooding with heat without his permission. "I don't bug him about what he does in his room. Even though him and that Manabe guy make the house smell like drugs all the time."

He sees her grin in the mirror. "It's just weed, Kyo-kun."

"Whatever. I don't know what it is. It stinks, though."

"I think you might be exaggerating," Tohru giggles, but the tension doesn't leave the moment. It's become the default state of her room, if anything.

Maybe it's to keep her hands busy, but she grabs another ribbon and starts fastening it into her hair. "Do you think Shigure… do you think he knows, too?"

He stares at her, even though she's not looking back at him now.

"Knows?" he asks vacantly.

"About us."

Kyo's world stutters on its axis.

Us.

She says it like it means something. Even though it would be so stupid to think it means something. And of course Kyo knows that it doesn't.

But that doesn't seem to stop everyone else in the world from having an opinion. Momiji today, asking Kyo questions that he doesn't want to answer. Yuki outside her door with vague threats and disdainful eyes. And now Tohru, hair wet and only footsteps away—

He can still picture Momiji's face.

"You know, right?"

Kyo panics.

"There's… there's no us for him, for any of them to know about," he snaps. "We're just practicing, right? So that's—it's weird that anyone would act like it's… like we're something that we're not. I don't know why they'd even care, when it doesn't have anything to do with them."

And he knows it's going to happen, but it still breaks some tiny part of him to see her shoulders tense up. Her brows furrow like she might cry.

"I'm sorry," she says, still fidgeting with her ribbon even though it's already tied into her hair. "I shouldn't have said—that was rude of me to… to say it like that, I didn't mean to upset—" Her words die out, tearfulness slipping into her voice, and Kyo steps closer, even though he knows he shouldn't.

"Wait, hey," he says quickly, "I'm… I just. Don't like people talking about me." Talking bad about you because of me, he means but doesn't say. "That's not your fault, though. Sorry."

Tohru's quiet as she turns to him then, and she's got that look in her eye that means she's holding something back. He wishes that she would bottle it up for just a little bit longer… but he also finds himself wanting her to confide in him, to trust him.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"Well, I…." She pauses, taking a breath. "I wanted to apologize, too."

"I told you, you don't have to be sorry."

He knows what she's going to say before she opens her mouth—he can read her too well, even when he wishes he could shut his eyes.

"No, I mean… I'm sorry for the other night, Kyo-kun."

He's known for a while now.

How she feels… what she feels for him. Knowing her more intimately than he knows anything else used to be a bright spot, like a guiding light—it felt like love.

But now it's just another curse, like being the Cat or being a monster.

"That was nothing," he says. "Honestly, I kind of forgot it happened."

He hasn't thought about much else since it happened—

"Still," Tohru says, "I can't help but feel like I messed everything up."

She fiddles with the top button on her shirt. Kyo fights the urge to touch her. "It really wasn't a big deal, though. You didn't scare me off or anything. Promise."

But it scares him so much, the way she doesn't look at the ground but instead meets his eyes. He knows that if they were reversed, he wouldn't be able to look at her. He'd die without saying anything at all.

"It was wrong of me, though," Tohru says firmly. "To bring up feelings that… that I shouldn't have."

Stop, he wants to tell her.

Because as long as she doesn't say it, he doesn't have to think about it. He doesn't have to think about her holding onto him in the rain, crying out during the stupid play. He doesn't have to acknowledge that no feelings is a lot easier said than done, and that he's done an awful job of that from the start—and now her feelings hang in the balance too, like a plot twist in a story that he never meant to write. He feels restless and wants to do something with his hands and needs a way out.

He grabs one of Tohru's ribbons and tugs on it, pulling it out of her hair as the bow comes undone.

"Kyo-kun! What—what was that for?" she asks, clutching at the side of her head.

"I don't know," he says blankly.

"That's—that's so—"

And he likes the way her eyes are suddenly wide and her face is flushed red. It's like she's flustered but a little bit pleased, too.

"You already had one," Kyo shrugs, trying to play it off, "so I figured you didn't need the other."

Her brows narrow. "Can I have it back?"

"Maybe if you ask nicely."

"I'm sorry for being rude," Tohru says, an exasperated grin creeping onto her face. "May I please have my ribbon back?" Her goofy smile makes his stomach flip-flop, and her damp hair and thin shirt make him feel like a disaster.

"S—sure," he says.

Before he can stop himself, he moves closer and, trying to remember how she did it, threads the ribbon back into her hair.

"Kyo-kun?"

"What?" He freezes, his face getting hot because he didn't think this through. Her hair tangles more easily when it's damp like this, and it makes him feel like he's been caught. "Do you not want me to?"

"N—no," she stammers, then backpedals. "Not no. I do! I was just surprised."

"I said you could have it back, didn't I?"

"You did." He can hear the soft smile in her voice. "Thank you, Kyo-kun."

Her hair is so soft. And he's felt her hair against his fingertips before, felt it tangle in his hands and pulled on it to the sound of Tohru's high-pitched sighs—but this feels different. It feels like… the way he would touch someone he loves, if he was allowed to. Gentle and quiet and intimate.

And what's more than that, Tohru lets him touch her, too. Like he's not just someone she wants to fuck. Like she loves—

This doesn't mean anything, he's told himself all along.

He wonders when that changed, or if he's always been lying to himself.

His fingers card deftly through her hair, and her breathing is a contented hum. And he realizes it in the silence, standing too close to her in the middle of her room. How they can't go back to how things were, before that first night on the roof and the way that it forced everything into motion.

"Like I told you, though," Tohru says. "I'm sorry about the other night. I won't do that again, I swear."

Stop stop stop—

It's just another thing he doesn't want to think about. Her begging him to stay, or the sound of her crying until they both fell asleep in her room, or him waking up the next morning and knowing that everything's changed.

Staying the night.

A line he never should've crossed—because he can't stay with her, can he? Not forever.

And he never meant for that to hurt anyone but himself—

"It's fine," he says. He quickly gets frustrated with tying the ribbon, his fingers too ineffectual to get the bow right, his hands too rough and calloused to do anything but harm her. She picks up on the tension in his hands, and soon her fingers overlap with his.

"Here, I can get it," she says, finishing the job and avoiding his eyes.

As long as she doesn't say it, Kyo doesn't have to deal with it.

"You know, right?"

He can't.

"Don't you, uh. Have homework?" he asks. "Because I do." He doesn't pull his hands away as quickly as he should. Tohru looks up to smile at him, and he feels the last strands of her hair slip through his fingers.

"I do, too!" she says. "We'd better start soon, or we'll be up all night."

Kyo's face flushes involuntarily, and Tohru's eyes widen in panic too, once she seems to realize what she said.

"Doing homework! Up all night doing homework is—is what I meant!" she rambles, shaking her head and waving her outstretched hands. "I didn't mean—not that we couldn't do that, if you wanted to—but we also don't have to, and maybe it would be better if we focused on homework anyway—because I have a quiz in a few days, and I don't think I understand anything that's going to be on it, because it's been really hard for me to focus the last few days, and—"

It's stupid.

Time is running out, and nothing makes sense to him anymore. He doesn't deserve to be with her like this, and he never has. But he should've known—he should've known that time wouldn't always split evenly into when they're friends and when they fuck. That those things could blur together in the confusion and heat of her bedroom, in the minutes before the sun goes down.

Kyo grabs her hands like he always does. "I knew what you meant, calm down," he says.

His mind went to the same place—

"Okay, good," she nods. "I didn't want to… make anything weird again."

"I'll tell you if you do, dummy."

He can't force that on her.

"I was serious, though." Tohru looks up at him. She takes a deep breath, then says, "That we could tonight. If you want to."

Kyo should've let go of her hands by now. But he finds that he's still holding them. His breath hitches.

"Yeah," he says. "We could."

He stares at her fingers caught in his, and he just… wants to kiss her. Press his lips to her wrists, feel her fingers knot in his hair, feel her hands pressed against his skin. He sees her face flush in his periphery, an image that's too out-of-focus for him to make sense of. It's not like when she's embarrassed. She doesn't look scared anymore.

He drops her hand and takes an awkward step back, suddenly feeling skittish.

"You said you didn't know what's gonna be on your quiz, right?" he asks.

He expects Tohru's eyes to widen, like she's upset or hurt—it's an expression he's painfully used to seeing on her face. But her brows furrow instead.

"Oh," she says. "Right... I'm just a little confused on it."

"I'll do it with you, then," he replies, an itch in his throat.

So they sit on Tohru's bed and do homework.

It's not like it used to be, not like that first time when Tohru sat by her pillow and Kyo stuck to the opposite end. Now, Tohru sits in the middle of the bed, back against the wall.

Kyo shouldn't do it—but he finds himself taking a seat next to her, shoulders to elbows to knees. Not quite touching, like it makes any difference.

"Did you bring anything to work on?" she asks him as she pulls her textbook out of her bag.

Heat rushes up Kyo's neck as he realizes how empty his hands are. How he made it all the way across the hallway, through the threshold of her room, pulled on her ribbon and ran his fingers through her hair and ended up on her bed before he even noticed his mistake.

"I already finished mine," Kyo says, not a complete lie. "I'll just help you with yours."

And there are Tohru's rosy cheeks again, too close. "Oh! Thank you, then," she smiles. "I really appreciate it."

He didn't notice because it wasn't a mistake, maybe.

Back then, Kyo took her in from a distance. They had to lean closer, inch by inch and excuse by excuse, mouths meeting in the center of the bed. But they sit like this now because they're too entangled, pressed together in almost every way. Everything is just a little too warm, heat building under Kyo's clothes. There's nothing but silent breaths and unspoken words keeping them from closing the gap.

From crossing a line. They cross so many lines, nowadays.

"Kyo-kun?" Tohru asks.

He blinks. He's been staring at her unfinished math worksheet for just a bit too long.

"Sorry, what's up?"

"Is this making any sense to you?" she asks sheepishly. "Because I'm a little lost."

Kyo is good at math. Really good, even. Under normal circumstances, it would make perfect sense to him.

But Tohru's breath is on his cheek, and their fingers keep brushing as they take turns looking at the page. And suddenly, the numbers aren't adding up.

Nothing is adding up.

"Try it this way," he says, scribbling down an equation half-heartedly and handing back her pencil. He can't justify scooting away from her, so he resolves to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead as she works.

Silence stretches on—not their usual kind, slow and steady. It's charged and alive and sounds a bit like screaming.

The mirror is in Kyo's line of sight on the opposite wall, and his eyes keep coming back to what he sees: Tohru's head down, nose buried in her textbook, dark hair hiding her eyes. Her pencil moving feverishly, gripped in her tiny hand. Her sleeve bunching higher on her forearm—and he wishes that he could kiss her there, or that she'd touch him.

He sees his own eyes most of all, though. Staring straight back at him. Hating what they see.

Movement catches his eye, taking him out of his thoughts. It's the slightest shaking of Tohru's pencil in her reflection. It spreads to the trembling of her shoulders.

He hears the beginning of a quiet sob.

"Tohru?"

"Sorry," she says quickly, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. "I'm sorry."

"What is it?" he asks.

"I just—I don't want to… to fail," Tohru says. "But I can't—I can't figure this one out."

Kyo never really knows what to do when she cries, but it cuts him to realize that he's been getting more practice lately.

"Hey, it's okay," he says. He plucks the pencil from her death grip. "It's one problem."

"It's not, though." Her words blur with fresh, hiccuping tears. "It's everything."

"Tohru, it's like. One quiz. You'll pass the class." He adds as a bitter afterthought, "And it's one stupid class, anyway. None of them actually matter."

"Of course they matter," Tohru looks at him, eyes glassy but still containing that determined glint. "I need to do well in class so that I can graduate… so I can get a good job, and have a good future."

Kyo swallows. "Your future is gonna be fine."

"But what about yours?"

Her words curl in the pit of Kyo's stomach like acid, and her pencil feels like a brick in his hand.

His future. He thinks of his own finished homework, tucked neatly into his bag and ready to turn in tomorrow. Homework to get good grades, good grades to graduate. Graduating.

Graduating for what?

He doesn't know why he keeps trying—

"This isn't about me, will you drop it?" he snaps.

It's the difference between knowing that his life will be over soon, a passive and distant truth—and knowing. Seeing it in Tohru's quickly paling face, cheeks wet with fresh tears. Hearing it in her irregular, shallow breathing. Staring it straight in the face.

"But you—it… I—" Her words die out until they're just choked sobs. "If you… I can't—"

Kyo panics.

"Wait," he says, touching her shoulder. It must burn her, because her sobs grow more reckless.

"I'm so—I'm sorry, Kyo-kun—"

"Hey… hey," he soothes, the tone unnatural in his voice. He runs a shaky hand through her hair. Like clockwork, she starts to gain control of her breathing again. "Don't apologize," he says awkwardly. "I was being a dick."

Her weeping quiets down, but she doesn't respond. Kyo takes her hand again, because he's never known when to quit.

"Look, I'm sorry," he says. "When you start talking about the future and all that… it freaks me out. I just. Want to focus on right now. Not the future, or anywhere else."

And as he reaches out to dry her tears with his thumb, feeling her soft skin against his fingertips and her steady breath against his jackrabbiting pulse—here with you goes unsaid.

Tohru blinks back a fresh wave of tears, inhaling and exhaling evenly. "It scares me, too."

Kyo is at a loss for words. Because what scares them will come, whether they think about it or not—so he circles his thumbs over her hands and asks time to stand still, just this once.

Tohru tilts her chin back up and gives him a small, crooked grin. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

She gently knocks her fist against Kyo's hairline. It takes him by surprise, heats up his entire body in the oddest way.

"If school doesn't matter," she says, "how come you study more than probably anyone in the world?"

Kyo rolls his eyes. "I do not."

"Kyo-kun, you study every night."

"That's normal."

"If you're a nerd," Tohru says through a fit of giggles.

"Shut up."

Tohru pauses. She looks down at her lap, at his hand on top of hers.

"Why do you, though?"

Kyo sees her sitting next to him. Hair tucked into a ribbon, eyes downcast, dusk light hitting the curve of her cheekbone and the tip of her nose through the window. Lips upturned in a private smile.

He thinks he might like to memorize the image forever if he could. He'd take a photograph of her like this, maybe, if he had a camera and she wouldn't want to hide from him and their lives were that simple.

He doesn't let himself look for more than a few seconds, though. Because when he looks at her too long, meaningless tasks like doing homework and not skipping school and waking up everyday start to mean something.

And the longer he looks at her, the more his future starts to resemble her face and nothing else.

"Because if I didn't," Kyo says, "who would do your homework for you, dummy?"

Tohru's brows knit in anguish, and she quickly hands back the paper. "I don't want you to do it for me! That would be cheating. I just… need a little help." She whispers, "That's not breaking the rules, is it?"

He raps his knuckles against the crown of her head.

"Pretty sure it is. Despicable."

The numbers on the page swim in front of Kyo, blurring to the sound of Tohru's soft laughter. That easy silence falls over them, moments that are fewer and farther between as the year goes by. It's like he can just forget everything that threatens to tear him apart.

The feeling of fingers threading lightly through his hair pulls him back to reality.

"Tohru."

"Hmm?" she says, almost absentmindedly as she plays with his hair.

Her breath ghosts over his ear, and it makes him shiver. His system is frazzled, ricocheting between the instinctual panic that grips him every time he's touched—and the comfort he feels with Tohru. How desperately he wants to feel her touch.

"You're being annoying," he says.

Tohru's voice quiets, but there's an edge and a playfulness to it. Like a dare.

"It didn't bother you the other night."

His eyes snap up to hers, and he sees her cheeks quickly flushing as his face does the same. His eyes lose focus, disoriented from numbers on a page that don't add up and the peaks and valleys of her face.

"That's… that's—" he splutters.

"I'm sorry," Tohru says, jerking her hand away. And it's like a curse, the way he misses her touch when it's gone. Like a dog to a bone, his hand crawls back to hers, palms pressed loosely together.

There's a shift in Tohru's eyes then, where they're no longer distraught but more curious. Her eyes shine, alight, Kyo thinks. She makes him forget how to breathe, how to do much of anything.

She reaches out and swipes her thumb gently under his eye. He's not crying, but it feels like her wiping away unshed tears. He stares back at her, and her eyes widen.

"You had an eyelash," she blurts out, drawing back her hand. He sees the tiny lash that clings to the pad of her thumb.

"Oh."

She sticks her hand back in his face, almost brash.

"You still have to make a wish!"

"I do not."

"Please?"

Kyo tries to focus on her earnest smile, not on her fingers dancing dangerously close to his mouth. But he tries and fails. He tends to tick off his failures on his fingers, one by one, and he's running out of clean hands.

"Whatever."

He gently blows on her thumb. The eyelash flickers away and disappears from her skin, too microscopic to be seen except from this close.

"What did you wish for this time?"

Kyo snorts. "You always wanna know."

"I do because you never want to tell me!" she giggles, raising an eyebrow. "Very mysterious of you."

She doesn't pull her hand away like she should, keeps it in front of him like she must not be thinking about it. He takes her wrist again, and it's the only thing he can think about.

"What if I said I didn't wish for anything?" he asks quietly. "That I don't believe in any of that?"

She keeps smiling—and he can't describe how she does it, but she frowns a bit, too. It happens in the way that most people wouldn't ever pick up on.

"I mean… of course you don't have to," Tohru says. "I just. We don't always get the chance to make wishes… and they don't always come true, I guess. But I—when I get the chance to wish for something I want… I never like to waste that, you know?"

"Hm," he says.

"Maybe that's selfish," she adds quickly.

He doesn't know how to tell her that it isn't, that it is. That he wished for nothing. That he wished for everything.

"I wished for you to pass this damn quiz, okay?"

Tohru laughs out loud, high and clear.

"I appreciate that, Kyo-kun! I probably needed the extra luck."

"Yeah, if you keep getting distracted."

He kisses her wrist then, clutched too tightly in his hand. Just barely, he hears her breath hitch. It feels like losing track of all of his sins.

Fuck.

"You're making me seem real shitty at helping," and Kyo expects her to respond with giggling and a high-pitched, rambling apology.

Instead, she says it softly and in this voice that he can't describe,

"Sorry."

He only meets her eyes for seconds, before he forces himself to look away again. Look away from her flushed face, her hand just slightly shaking in his grasp, the way she's biting her lip as her eyes pin him down—

Kyo hmphs and tries to get a grip. "Sure you are." He drops her hand.

He starts shuffling paper and pencils around, but it's useless when his eyes are drawn instead to the lines of Tohru's fingers, the grooves of her knuckles. The longer he looks, the more he discovers the tiny imperfections of her hands, cuts and bitten nails that most people would never notice.

He hears her suck in a careful breath.

"Do you want to practice?" she asks.

It's like being doused in cold water. He shivers and doesn't understand it.

"Why?"

Again, he expects rambling and jumping through hoops. Piles upon piles of justification. But she looks at him now, her expression so simple despite how fucking complicated everything is.

"I don't know," Tohru says. "But do you want to?"

Kyo's head is reeling. "Well, do you want to?"

"I asked you first."

"Tohru." Kyo drags a hand across his face, feeling his skin grow uncomfortably hot. "This is stupid."

"Is it?"

"Doing that tonight would be stupid. I didn't—we were supposed to do homework. We've been wasting enough time already."

"So you..." she trails off. "Do you think it would be a waste of time?"

He hears a twinge of hurt feelings in her voice, and he wants to double back, soften, apologize—

"Yeah, I do," he says instead.

Because it is a waste of time for her. That much is definitely true.

Tohru's brows furrow and her mouth turns into a straight line.

"You could've just said no," she says, quietly. "If you didn't want to."

But she seems to just stop any other trace of emotion before it reaches her face. She gets off the bed, making a beeline for her desk to pick up a different textbook. When she comes back to the bed, she sits against her headboard. The space next to Kyo feels cold now, a slight indentation left in the duvet.

He presses his palms into his eye sockets, head falling forward.

"I didn't say no, okay? But we've practiced a lot now, and you—" he blushes, hard enough that he feels lightheaded, "—you, uh. Know what you're doing now. So you don't have to offer just to be nice."

For his sake, when she gets nothing out of it, when she never will—

"Kyo-kun."

"What?"

He opens his eyes and regrets it, when he realizes that she's staring at him. Her eyes are bright, setting fires.

"I would tell you if I didn't want to."

"Okay," he says awkwardly.

"And I didn't say no, either."

And it's like his entire body heats up, and he can't stop it. Not when she looks at him like that, when she just comes out and says it like that. He's lost for words, and he makes the mistake of avoiding her eyes.

His gaze drifts down to her chest, where her damp hair creates wet spots in the worst places—a sick mosaic of light and dark on the almost see-through fabric of her shirt. The thought grips him randomly, inappropriately, intensely, like a craving and a punishment:

He's seen her tits before.

He's seen her tits before.

And standing on the edge of whatever comes next, he spirals.

"You didn't dry your hair," he blurts out.

"What?"

This isn't how it used to be. He can't take her clothes off and kiss every inch of her skin, and then banish the memory from his mind and scratch the image from his retinas and scrub the trace of her from his hands afterwards—

"Your hair is still wet, idiot. Now your shirt is wet, too."

Tohru turns red, the coloring spreading down her neck, down to her collarbone which makes it worse. Her hand moves to her collar, fiddling with the top button. "I'm sorry… I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You didn't, it's... just a dumb thing to do."

"Okay," she says. Something like a challenge creeps into her voice.

Kyo's world moves in slow motion as Tohru's hands go to the hem of her shirt—and then she's pulling it up and over her head.

She tosses the shirt into the far corner of her room, and it's gone forever, along with Kyo's last brain cell.

"There," she says. "Am I being less dumb now?"

He stares at her bare chest and feels absolutely fucking stupid.

"... Yeah."

"Should I—" Tohru pauses, voice colored by confidence and fear and chaos. Too breathless for such small movements and unimportant conversations. "Should I put on a different shirt?"

Kyo doesn't deserve to touch her, and he never will, and he has to live with that.

But god, does he want to touch her.

"No, you're good," he responds.

He crosses the length of the bed in seconds and kisses her hard.

Tohru surges up to meet him, one hand sliding up his neck and the other messing up his hair. He brushes her wet hair off her chest. Her skin is cold and smooth when he reaches up to cup her breast. It's only been a few nights—but touching her now makes it feel like forever has passed. Like forever is going to run out any day now.

She gasps, needy as she deepens the kiss, and it still makes his stomach flip to feel her nipple stiffen against his palm. It isn't long before Tohru's hands roam lower, pulling at the hem of Kyo's shirt. He quickly pulls it off and tosses it off the bed—and while Kyo usually tries to think through his decisions, he's quickly finding that the difference between forethought and impulse gets lost somewhere in Tohru's parted lips, with her tits in his hands, logic drowned out by the sound of her whining.

They stay like that as time stands still, racing still too fast in Kyo's periphery and making him dizzy. He settles on top of Tohru, her back pressed against the headboard as his hips cage her in. It scares him, the way she seems so small beneath him. So delicate.

Like he could break her. Destroy her.

But then he feels her nails, light as feathers as she traces up and down his naked back. It seizes the oxygen out of his lungs, setting every inch of his skin on fire. Because it's hot—but it's sweet, too. Terrifying and amazing, to be touched so lightly. Like he's just as human as she is. He hardly recognizes the ugly gasps and moans leaving his mouth as his own.

It's embarrassing how good it feels.

He breaks the kiss, leaning into the crook of her neck and breathing hard. He keeps his eyes shut, shivering and unable to name the sensation. It shuts down his ability to form words, to think.

"Are you okay?" Tohru asks.

"Yes, yes… no, yeah, definitely okay," he babbles like an idiot. Tohru giggles.

"Good to know."

"Stop being a brat."

"Sorry," she laughs.

Kyo scowls before pressing his mouth to hers, reminded for the thousandth time that he's more breakable than Tohru will ever be. That it's always been the other way around—that she could make him come undone or tear him apart, if she really wanted to.

Tohru bites his bottom lip. He gasps, disoriented as her mouth travels down the exposed line of his throat. She nips at his skin, and he feels that between his legs. Her hands roam over his chest, skin soft but lips wet and hot against his collarbone in a way that he can barely keep up with.

She's bolder than when they first started this—it's playful, teasing, agonizing, the way that she licks his skin and then pulls away just so. He feels the absence of it like abandonment, but when he opens his hazy eyes, he finds her staring up at him with an amused grin.

Oh, he must look flushed and dazed and like a mess.

"Don't look at me like that," Kyo mutters.

He threads a hand into her hair and pulls down, tilting her chin up—and he thinks he might remember it forever, the image of her widening eyes and face turning red in the split second before he kisses her roughly.

He worries that he might have hurt her, but reassurance comes as she sighs into his open mouth.

She writhes under him, heat building under his skin at the friction. Her nails dig lightly into his shoulder, his bicep, his forearm. It makes Kyo feel like his body is his, for once. At least right now. As long as she's touching him.

His fingers brush against her ribbons. Something takes over him as he tugs one out of her hair, then the other—she gasps and reaches up, but she doesn't stop him. Her hands get mixed up with his; damp hair and pink ribbons and overheated skin get tangled between their fingertips.

Tohru moans like she doesn't realize he can hear her, and he laughs awkwardly against her lips.

"So you like that."

Her face turns crimson. "I don't—not—I just… well."

She tries to bury her face in her hands, but he keeps tight hold of her wrists and won't let her. She squirms beneath him, eyes shut tight as he looks at her red face.

She's just… cute. Pretty. It's awful.

"Yeah, I had a feeling."

"Kyo-kun."

"Uh huh."

It strikes Kyo then that they might as well be holding hands—and it's intimate, much too intimate.

He should know better—

He drops her wrists, and Tohru's eyes flash with something. He doesn't have time to decipher the intricacies of her expression, because then she leans up and kisses him. And Kyo feels like he could just forget everything else when they're pressed together like this—

Until her hands come up to push against his chest.

Panic seizes him at the pressure, instincts kicking in like a cornered animal. Everything blurs as he pushes himself off of her. He stumbles backward to the edge of the bed, breathing heavy.

Terrified that he crushed her like glass beneath him, under the weight he carries in his chest.

"Kyo-kun? What's wrong?"

The mattress dips as Tohru crawls towards him. He doesn't realize he's shaking until she takes one of his hands and holds it close to her heartbeat, searching his gaze.

But all he can look at are the blood splatters that he's sure he sees, even though they're not real. On his hands, now on hers, on the bed, on her body, everywhere—

"Kyo. It's me."

His wide eyes meet hers, and it's like the word repeats over and over again in the silence.

His name—

She covers her mouth with her hands. "I'm—I'm so sorry. I don't… I don't know why I said—"

"It's fine," he says quietly, dumbly, fondly—something tragic and lovestruck and muddy twisting in his gut.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," she says.

"Well yeah, I'm—fine," Kyo says, breathing evening out. "But are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You started… you were pushing me off. I just thought that I—" The words die out, and he rubs at his neck. "You're okay?"

"Oh, yes, I am," she almost laughs, so light that it illuminates the room in a way that her lamp never could. "I was just… well, it's silly."

"You can tell me." He knocks his fist gently against her forehead, eliciting a giggle. "I'll only make fun of you a little. Promise."

"Okay, well," she takes a deep breath, "when I was pushing you off—not because I wanted to stop, because I didn't! But I just—" And a blush spreads quickly across her face, a shade much more intense and fascinating to Kyo than her already ruddy cheeks.

"I-wanted-to-be-on-top-for-a-bit," she blurts out all in one breath, eyes blown wide as she looks at him.

Kyo's head spins.

"Oh." Oh shit fuck fuck shit oh fuck that's really hot—

"If that would be okay!" Tohru adds in a rush. "Maybe. Or not."

"You can," he says.

It's far from smooth or romantic—they're awkward as they reconfigure themselves, Kyo scooting past Tohru to lean back against the headboard. He grows antsy like this—and as he watches her shuffling around in front of him, still naked from the waist up, that hyper awareness of her body pricks him like pins and needles.

He's grateful when she flicks off her lamp, covering them in a more familiar, moonlit darkness. It feels like shelter to Kyo—from being seen by her in a harsher, less forgiving light.

She settles into his lap, moving languidly until she's straddling him. It feels like a sin, to look at her like this, even with the lights off. It feels even more like something that's only allowed in shadows.

But the darkness makes him bolder, too.

He palms at her ribs gently, feeling goosebumps rise on her skin as his hands slowly inch upward. Even in the dimness, he notices her nipples stiffening as he cups her breasts.

"That was fast."

"Don't laugh at me," Tohru says, voice too sweet for her sharp words.

"Sorry," he smirks, pulling his hands away.

"You're still laughing…"

"Because you're being goofy."

He finally stops when she kisses him again, taking his hands and slowly tugging them back up.

She's persistent, but as if she doesn't want him to notice it, until he continues touching her. He squeezes and caresses to the rhythm of her breath hitching, and he brushes over the peak of her breast with his thumb in light, teasing circles.

She breaks the kiss and tilts her head back, eyelids falling shut like they're heavy. Even with the lights off, traces of moonlight spill in from the window and hit her collarbone, her neck, the underside of her jaw. It keeps him in shadows that feel like home, casting her in light as he looks up at her face. Tonight, she's like something ethereal, existing far above him and looking down on him and maintaining an insurmountable distance between them, no matter the way that she grasps his wrists or rocks her hips into his—

"Your hands are warm," she says, and Kyo thinks it's just to mask what would've been a soft moan.

"Right, sure. That's the reason you like them there."

"I'm cold!"

"You're such a baby," Kyo says, and any further protests seem to die on Tohru's lips as he leans forward and begins to suck on her breast.

Kyo's thoughts devolve into white noise, teeth scraping against the swell of her breast as his hand splays over the other. His brain consists of nonsensical sounds and syllables, a string of words that resemble something like she's so hot oh my god I can't believe I'm touching her tits with my tongue oh my god need to remember to breathe I'm getting lightheaded how are her tits in my mouth am I gonna start hyperventilating how is she this hot—

He manages to ask, "Feeling warmer?"

"Not quite," Tohru says, voice absolutely mischievous in a way that still shocks him, pleases him, disarms him. "I was really cold… you might want to keep going…"

He does, laughing hot against her skin.

Somewhere between kisses and soft bites and even softer gasps, Kyo's hands slide around to the curve of her back. He holds her close, but never close enough. Her skin is soft, slick with sweat. He feels her trembling beneath his fingers, and every sensation is heady.

"I've been wondering," Kyo breathes against her skin, taking her nipple back into his mouth.

"Mhm?" Tohru asks, voice tight—but she digs her nails into his shoulders, like she's slowly losing her grip on everything else. He fights away shades of embarrassment (he should be over it by now). His overheating system gets warmer as a blush spreads across his face.

"Do you… uh, like it?" he asks, and he runs his fingers along the waistband of her pajama pants. "When I do this."

Tohru gasps out, "Please." Her hand clambers to find his, urging it lower.

He watches her face; the way her chin dips down, light hitting her closed eyes and glazed, desperate expression. He dips his hand beneath her waistband, fingers sliding further down.

Kyo feels the wetness between her legs, and he finds he doesn't need an answer to his question.

"Fuck," he says.

He slowly slips a finger inside her. Tohru moans, and soon he presses in another. She lifts her hips higher, and when she shudders on top of him, it somehow feels like the earth moving. He groans at the loss of friction, though, realizing how quickly he was getting hard with her rutting against him.

He really likes how wet she is.

She whines his name with every slow pulse of his hand, whimpers colored high and broken. He can't judge her babbling, not when he's lost for words altogether and on the verge of an erotically-induced blackout.

It's hard for him to believe it.

He sucks on her breasts, rubs circles against her clit, brings her close to the edge of something. She speaks to him without words, and he hangs onto every dizzying sound she lets out—because he doesn't know how to believe it. That this is happening, that she might enjoy this even half as much as he does. That when he's not hurting her feelings, making her cry, ruining her life… that maybe he makes her feel good.

If he can make her feel this way, is he really such a monster—

"Stop," she says.

Glass seems to shatter, or maybe it's tectonic plates breaking apart beneath them—but Kyo slams back against her headboard, withdrawing his hands and mouth and feeling like he can't withdraw far enough at all.

"Tohru?"

Her pupils are blown wide, not looking at anything as she breathes heavily. He takes her face in his hands, and it's somehow worse to meet her eyes like this. To see the panic racing through her entire body.

"Tohru, are you okay?"

"Sorry," she says too quietly. "I just—I can't right now. I can't—"

"That's fine."

"I'm sorry. I want—it's not your fault, Kyo-kun."

"Don't worry about that." His hand drifts to stroke through her hair.

Her eyes start returning to normal, but they still look glassy. When she looks like this, all he wants is to keep her from crumbling. From breaking into tiny, irreparable pieces.

"I used to be able to… y'know, when we practice," Tohru says, cheeks taking on a pinker shade. "I don't know… why I can't anymore."

Kyo rubs the small of her back, trying to ease the tension there. "You're just in your head too much."

"I don't want to ruin everything."

And the look in her eyes is terrified as she whispers it. He's caused that look before, will never forget the way it stops his pulse.

He leans forward and presses a soft kiss to the hollow of her throat. Their heartbeats keep time with one another. That's enough, he thinks, as long as they can stay like this.

"You won't," he says against her skin. "Promise."

He looks up and sees color coming back to her face. Her smile is lopsided but peaceful. Fond, if he lets his mind go there.

"Thanks."

Kyo asks, "Can I help?"

That's when he feels her hand on his face, thumb brushing against his cheekbone. He can't explain why the sensation feels foreign.

She lingers as she pulls her hand back, until her fingers trail down and rest on his bottom lip.

"I'm not sure," she says.

And he isn't sure whether she puts her fingers in his mouth, or if he pulls them in. All he knows is Tohru's dilated pupils and the look of rapture on her flushed face as he begins to suck on them. He can never describe exactly what her skin tastes like, but with her fingers against his tongue, he knows that he likes it. Likes how she watches him with lidded eyes, always looking down on him, always above him.

That's how it's supposed to be—

Tohru replaces her fingers with her mouth, leaning down and pressing a searing kiss to his lips. They move against each other in the dark, just like that. Kyo ignores the shock to his system as he loses track of time.

He breaks the kiss to breathe. "Do you want to keep going?" he asks.

"My ribbons."

"Huh?"

"Where are they?"

Kyo disentangles his arms from her body, groping around on the rumpled duvet. He eventually finds one. "Here."

"Thanks," she says, and then she gathers her hair back, using the ribbon to tie it into a haphazard ponytail. She starts to move backward, just out of his lap. It's like a slow-motion rush, where Kyo realizes, with startling clarity, exactly what she's going to do in the three seconds before it happens.

Tohru starts undoing his pants, and he really does think he might blackout this time.

"Uh."

Her eyes dart up to his, and her face turns red. "I'm so sorry," she blurts out, hands freezing centimeters from his dick. "Is this okay?"

"Yes—" Fuck. He sounds too eager. "No, yeah… it's fine. If you wanna."

It's fine.

He helps Tohru pull his pants and boxers off, and he flushes when a rough sigh escapes him. He didn't realize how tight his jeans had gotten. And he's hard. Like, embarrassingly hard.

Tohru doesn't go wide-eyed and slack-jawed like the first time she saw him like this, but her face takes on a noticeably pinker shade.

"I hope I'm better than last time," she says, a little breathless as she moves between his legs.

"Doesn't practice m—" he gasps as she wraps her hand around his length, "... make perfect." He grips the bedsheets, tries to keep his cool.

"Something like that."

"Yeah, well. Don't let it go to your head."

"I would never," Tohru smiles, not even feigning eye contact, her gaze fixed much lower. "Promise."

It's weird. This thing that happens when they have sex.

Kyo's brain, usually cluttered with dread and panic and chaos, just… turns off when they're like this. Every day, the world spins faster in a way that he can't keep up with. But she strokes up and down, and he loses himself in the sensation of her small hands touching him—and it's like he can breathe.

She makes it quiet in his mind, for just a little bit.

His breath hitches when her hand stops. Keep going keep going fuck please he stops himself from saying, not wanting to sound like he's desperate. Out of control.

He watches Tohru as her head dips lower. She presses her tongue against the base of his cock, drags it up his length. His mouth runs dry as he meets her gaze, her eyes bold and dark.

"Better?" she chirps, and her breath right there is making him go insane.

"Yeah, yeah… keep practicing."

"Okay," Tohru laughs.

And like always, she rises to the challenge. Practice makes perfect, but practice also feels like it's going to kill him when she teases the tip of him with her tongue like that. Her giggles ricochet through his skeleton, worm their way into his bloodstream. When she takes him fully into her mouth, he buries his face in the crook of his elbow.

He can't hold back a moan as she starts bobbing her head up and down. If he's spiraling out of control, then he's at the mercy of her hands, her mouth, her eyes. Her eyes are always so brave, in a way that he isn't.

It's the dumbest thought: giving her control over him. Tohru, who is kind and delicate and soft. Tohru who cries over stray cats, Tohru who jumps up and down when she's happy, Tohru who touches every part of him so gently. It doesn't match up in his brain: Tohru and that dark, confining idea. When control is about power, and taking, and fear.

But he whispers her name to an awkward, reckless rhythm—it matches the warm movements of her mouth—and he knows that she does have a power over him. And he doesn't try to fight it. He wonders if it's such a bad thing.

It feels nothing like a curse.

"Could you use your hands, too?"

"Yeah," she pants.

And she does—she really does.

Kyo finds himself speechless, even as he devolves into a writhing mess. Everything out of his mouth is blurred, his gasps and moans taking the shape of her name. The blood rushing in his ears makes it difficult to hear beyond what he can feel—because god, he feels so much.

Tohru pulls back for a moment. The sudden loss of wetness and warmth, of being overwhelmed by her, makes him groan low and ugly. But then she tightens her hand around him, and her mouth returns, too, and Kyo loses the ability to process either of those things.

Every movement of her lips at the head of his cock, every swirl and trace of her tongue, is amplified by the increased pressure from her fingers. He knows her hands as well as his own. They're small and delicate and gentle—but they're also strong. She moves deftly, touching him so intimately without hurting him.

The sensation threatens to pull him out of his existence, like he's both in the room and yet separate from himself.

And it's funny, the way he's spent his entire life desperately wanting to escape his own existence. But now, as her slim fingers move in tandem with her mouth, Kyo finds himself wanting to stay in his body as long as he can. He thinks he could live with it—live with being a selfish monster, inside and out—if that's the price of feeling like this. Of feeling her.

It's as if he's being let out of a cage.

A devastating pleasure gnaws at his gut, and it only gets worse as he cracks his eyes open to watch her. Nightfall changes the room to just shapes and outlines, but Tohru is still just as vivid in front of him. Even when she's just wisps of hair, the sweat on her skin, her darkened lips in an even darker room.

Her eyes stay tightly shut—and he prefers it that way. Just to look at her, at how beautiful she is. And never have to deal with her looking back at him.

That's how it's supposed to be—

But her lashes do eventually flutter back open. And that, combined with a particularly intoxicating bend of her wrist, is enough to force his own eyes shut again. He bites his lip and traps a moan between his teeth.

His hands lose their last trace of hesitancy, sliding down and threading themselves into her hair like she's a lifeline. When he tugs lightly, Tohru gasps; it vibrates against his skin, throughout his entire body. He pulls harder the next time.

It's not such a scary, new thing, like when she's done this before… honestly, it's almost familiar at this point. And that means the practice worked after all—that Kyo prepared her for when she finds someone better. Just like he always meant to do.

It's a form of atonement, to see his selfishness balanced out by her getting something out of it—balanced out by it tearing him apart, too, in the way that he deserves.

The words taste bitter in the back of his throat, so he swallows them down.

Tohru's mouth moves faster, and he thinks he might choke on every strained sound he makes. Her hair starts to mat with sweat beneath his fingers, a patchwork of softness and tangled strands—until it's not.

He feels her ribbon pull loose.

Her hair had already tumbled out of her ponytail in some places, pulled out roughly or coming unfastened on its own. But now the ribbon catches on his fingers as he pulls his hand away, and her hair spills out completely. It falls down her shoulders, trails along her chest, frames her face like a photograph.

Her eyes flit up to his, and she pauses—without actually moving away from him.

Kyo takes in the sight of her fully then, meeting her eyes. She sits frozen between his legs with his dick still in her mouth.

With his dick still in her mouth.

It's some combination of the hottest, funniest, and most mortifying thing he's ever experienced.

"Shit." Kyo flushes. "Sorry… I didn't mean to do that."

Tohru pulls away now, and he can just barely make out her wet, slightly swollen lips in the dark. Everything is hazy, light hitting her at odd angles. It's yet another image that he can feel etching itself in his mind forever.

At school, around the house, Tohru always looks perfect. Put together. Clean. It twists inside him like a deeply-felt nausea—to see her like this. Bare, flushed, messy… imperfect.

Pitch-black shadows drown them out through foggy windows. And across from each other on her bed, Kyo realizes that they're almost the same when they're like this.

She breaks into a goofy grin and starts giggling. And against his better judgement, Kyo starts laughing too. He feels bold, so he leans forward and cups her face with his hands.

"Dummy," he says, squeezing her cheeks.

"Sorry." Her smile widens as she laughs, and he can feel her face move as her eyes scrunch up. It makes it harder to breathe. It's a sensation that's too visceral; everything about this is a thought that's too uncomfortable.

"At least you're cute, idiot," he mutters. It's reckless in a way that neither of them acknowledge.

Tohru's giggle grows nervous, and she reaches off to the side to grab her ribbon. She starts to tie her hair back up.

"Wait." Kyo blurts out, hand sliding down to her wrist. "You don't… uh. Have to."

"What?"

"You can leave it down." His face burns. "If you want."

"Oh… okay! Sure."

Tohru turns as red as he must be—but something shifts in her eyes as well. What's always looked like warmth starts to resemble heat, dark and burning like the ache that pools deep in his stomach. He becomes hyper-aware again of their current state, of her tits as she leans down between his legs, of his dick out, of her fingers wrapping around him and his head spinning.

The sensation is like something that pulls Kyo back to earth.

His hips jerk involuntarily when he feels her mouth again. He thought their brief pause would make them lose momentum—but that's not what happens at all. He starts muttering swear words, unintelligible sounds, and her name, her name, her name most of all.

He's way more sensitive now, and he almost panics at the intensity building twice as fast throughout his entire body. He panics, but he also finds himself chasing desperately after how good it feels. How good everything feels with Tohru.

Her hair spills down her shoulders and back, and he watches as tangled strands frame her mouth moving faster. The pressure, the wetness, the heat burning between them in the darkness—he gasps as his thoughts start to tilt sideways.

Everything feels like blinding light, so he shuts his eyes. But he still sees her smile, and he hears her laugh, and it melts away the anxiety that always intertwines itself with the pleasure in his gut. Maybe they'll never be more than this. Maybe this is just something that they do.

Maybe he doesn't need to think about it at all.

His hips buck into her mouth, and he digs his nails into her pillow. In spite of everything, lightness takes over Kyo's mind, always the darkest place.

His thoughts race, even as his body is entirely in Tohru's control—and he thinks of now, of every time they do this, of all the little moments they share. And maybe all of these are nothing more than tiny, insignificant moments... but they still make him feel better. Hell, he always thought he'd die a virgin, until he met Tohru. Until this.

Even if it doesn't mean anything—for them to fuck and for Tohru to smile at him and for Kyo to feel happy—it doesn't mean nothing, either. It makes him think of the things that matter to him, things that make him feel like it's worth it. The reason that he still wakes up everyday and does his homework and knocks twice on Tohru's bedroom door.

Like he has things that are worth living for—

She doesn't pull away.

He comes, and—

And she doesn't pull away.

She doesn't pull away, and Kyo feels her as he goes over the edge, and he opens his eyes to see it—because he can feel it as she swallows, holy fuck he can feel it, but he can't bring himself to believe it. Every nerve-ending in his body shorts out with overstimulation. His heartbeat hammers in his chest, and his senses can only make sense of her tongue pressed against his shaft, of her swollen lips surrounding him, of his muscles contracting in ecstasy. He's horrified yet captivated when he sees the little movements of her throat, watching her swallow this part of him that he hates so much—

"You know, right?"

It feels so much like acceptance that it breaks something deep inside of him.

He rides out the sensation, consumed entirely by it until Tohru finally does pull back. Everything tingles, like an itch that won't go away, like something quaking underneath his skin. His breathing doesn't slow down like he expects it to.

As he meets her eyes, open again and looking at him intently, it feels too much like when she saw his true form.

"Why…" Kyo breathes, "... why'd you do that?"

"I'm so sorry." Tohru's eyes instantly go wide. "I should've asked, or—I'm really sorry, I guess I wasn't really thinking about it—and it just kind of happened—"

"No, I'm not—I'm like, not mad about it." He feels himself flush as he scratches the back of his neck. "I just. I was just… surprised."

He can hear himself, and he sounds so calm. Why does he sound so calm? He doesn't feel calm, he feels—

"Okay! Just... as long as you're not upset."

"I'm not."

It felt amazing. There's nothing to be upset about. So why does he—

Tohru gets up and walks to the corner of the room; he stares at the slope of her back, messy hair against pale skin as she bends down. When she turns around, she's got her shirt clutched to her chest. Self-consciousness seems to hit both of them at the same time; Kyo awkwardly pulls his boxers back on as she sits back down on the bed.

He's antsy as he watches her unbutton her wrinkled shirt and then slide it on, one sleeve at a time. And it hits him like a train: the need to do something with his hands. Something, anything.

The urge to grab tissues from the bedside table dies on his fingertips—because he can't clean her up like he usually does, like he wants to—because there's nothing to clean up this time.

Wordlessly, Kyo moves closer and brushes her hands away from the front of her shirt.

"Here."

He starts at the bottom hem, carefully buttoning her shirt back up. He tries not to think too much about her flushed chest, about the swell of her breasts, about her breath on his cheek and far too close.

God, she's so close.

"I guess I can finish the worksheet in the morning, maybe," Tohru says sheepishly.

"Sorry… I can still help you."

"No, you really don't have to! I'll be fine—"

"I just want to." His hands shake on the third button. Why are his hands shaking?

Tohru smiles in his periphery. "Thank you. That's really sweet."

"Whatever."

His hands shake because buttoning a shirt is different than cleaning her up. And it feels worse, to not just make a mess of himself—but to have it contimate every inch of her in a way that he can't get rid of anymore. It's worse now that he can't scrub himself off of her skin, now that parts of him crawl around in her skeleton and fester there like an infection.

It's too much. He can't go anywhere but down.

"Kyo-kun?"

He's slumped forward now, forehead pressed against her shoulder.

He didn't realize he moved at all. It's his body giving out on him, just another sign of a manufacturer's defect. He's so fucking tired.

"Sorry, I just… I don't know." His hands still shake as he grips the front of her shirt.

"It's okay," she says softly.

It stings to feel her hand curl lightly into his hair, fingers drifting across the nape of his neck. She smells like apples, but she smells like him now, too.

This is absolutely the worst part, he realizes. That she chose this. That he could've gone on forever, perfectly fine as they passed each other by; a human and a monster, an angel and some sort of demon, a person and a thing.

But Tohru let him in, again and again and again too many times. She put them on equal ground that he has no right to walk on. She made an imprint on his heart, when no one ever asked her to.

He couldn't have stopped himself from loving her, but she has no reason to love—

And there's no way that she does.

It's the thought that he clings to as he presses himself into the crook of her neck, as he takes in her warmth. They're the words that keep him breathing. They taste good as they roll around in his mouth and scrape against the back of his teeth.

After everything he's done, she can't love him—

She whispers it. She whispers it, and it's so incredibly loud:

"Kyo?"

It feels like his hiding place has been broken into, the curtain ripped open, the door kicked down.

Fuck—

Her shirt starts to feel damp against his face… no, his face is wet. He still can't breathe—he gasps for air, and it doesn't help him feel any less lightheaded, and his hands still shake as he holds onto her shirt—

"Kyo."

He can't breathe as easily as he thought he could, because all he can think of is how she chose this, and he runs in her bloodstream irreversibly when he never meant to, when he never meant for her to choose him, and he didn't get anything on her so he doesn't know how to clean it up this time—but it's still everywhere, it's still disgusting, and he can't make it stop he doesn't know how to get it off of her he doesn't know how to stop her he can't—

"Kyo, are you okay?"

He realizes that he's crying. Realizes that she keeps saying his name like that, realizes that he can't stop crying. Realizes that he can't stop himself in the same way that he can't stop people from walking in front of trains, from walking into busy streets, from running after him in the rain when she should just go home—

"I—" Kyo gasps, shrinking in on himself, "I don't, I—"

He cries harder when he feels Tohru's hands on his shoulders—her touch gentle and familiar when it shouldn't be either of those things. Her fingertips on his skin feel light as feathers, but his bones are heavy beneath them.

Maybe he can't hold himself up any longer, or maybe she guides him down. He finally lets go of the fabric of her shirt as he feels himself go sideways.

"Kyo… it's going to be okay."

He lets his head fall into her lap.

"I'm sorry," he says.

He hears her saying his name long after she goes silent, the sound reverberating in his mind and mixing with his repeated apologies and choked cries. He says I'm sorry again and again, and it never feels like enough.

He curls in on himself, wondering how small he has to get before he stops existing. Please, he thinks. He'd give anything to not exist.

"It's going to be fine," Tohru says. "Really, I promise."

She runs her fingers through his hair, and he knows that it should hurt, that it should cut him so deeply and make him simmer with rage—but it just feels nice.

"I'm sorry," he says until he can't anymore.

"It's okay… Kyo, it's okay."

He doesn't feel himself calm down, but his tears do eventually run out.

His breathing evens to the tempo of her hands in his hair, tracing patterns tenderly against his scalp. His eyes start to readjust, and he stares at her bedroom wall because he knows it like the back of his hand. And he knows that it's wrong of him. But when they're like this, he feels it so completely. That she chose him.

And he knows that he should hate it, and he does, more than anything else… but he's so weak. He could shatter at any moment.

So with a tiny piece of himself, he doesn't hate it.

As he rests his head in her lap, he finds safety and security not quite in her arms but close enough. And he feels so many things, and none of them are hate.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, breaking the silence.

"No."

"That's okay."

He glances up at Tohru's face. She's already looking down at him.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks.

Her eyes contain a million shades—words he can't understand and images that he wishes he could unsee.

"I wish that I could hold you," she says.

Something unnameable constricts in his throat, like her bedroom walls caving in around him. Tohru doesn't say anything else, and he doesn't need her to. Her room goes silent, like the noise cutting out on the television mid-sentence. Kyo can still hear the wind chimes from downstairs, though—lonely and hopeless and broken.

"You know, right?"

But Kyo still makes himself ask. He turns away abruptly, pressing his burning cheek back into the fabric of her pajama pants.

"Why?"

"I don't know," Tohru says.

But he knows. He wishes that he didn't.

i never wanted anything,
and i never got it
i never wanted anything,
and look, i got it
look, i got it