"If it were," Doctor Noergaard says, pausing to worry at her bottom lip, "if it were, you could never have been cured in the way you described; a 'mental shock', no matter how powerful, cannot rearrange one's DNA. If it were, you would have accumulated much more irreparable damage to yourself at this point, especially from the childhood years spent mostly by yourself, and also from the way you described your lifestyle in recent years as 'reckless'. Without any adults to correct your posture when you were sitting in a way that could damage your spine, why is it that your spine is not damaged? How is it that you knew to blink to avoid serious damage to your corneas? Clearly you were able to, perhaps subconsciously, feel irritation and therefore pain. There is no way you could be as healthy as you are now if you had Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, which you don't and never have had."

The diagnosis is disheartening in a way, but it's not unexpected. Noiz had done the research about his former painless condition as soon as he'd had access to his first computer. If it were, he adds to himself, bitterly, his parents would have jumped at the opportunity to play the martyrs. Parading him around, you poor dear, a convenient excuse to make Theo the heir without resorting to locking the eldest son away in a guest room. He'd have been a PR puppet and would have hated it and would have run away regardless, and nothing would have changed in the end except that Aoba wouldn't have been able to cure him. Most forms of CIP are caused by mutations in genes – he remembered trying medications in his youth when his parents still had hope for him and hope that it was a curable form – and his symptoms had too many inconsistencies to match any previously diagnosed version of the disorder. The fact that he'd lacked all sensations of touch and temperature but kept sensation in his tongue, the fact that he showed no signs of mental retardation or other ill effects that often accompanied such disorders…

Everything pointed to a psychological cause. It wasn't something Noiz liked to consider, that it had been in his head all along. It still isn't, but he can't hide from the truth about himself any longer. He is the way he is because his parents' neglect damaged his psyche during infancy or shortly thereafter. Because he'd been neglected even before he'd made himself worthy of being called a 'monster', because he'd been so touch-starved as a toddler that he'd unconsciously decided early on (so, so early on that he can't remember when the change occurred), in the spiteful way that is his trademark, "If you won't hug me, I won't need hugs. If you won't kiss my wounds better, I won't even feel them."

Perhaps his parents had realized what they'd done wrong and fixed it by the time Theo came along. They showered the younger brother with false praise and false love, and as a result Theo came out normal. He hadn't realized how hollow their parents' interactions were until he was older, and even now Theo struggles to resent them because he wants so badly to believe that the love they gave him was real.

"Wilhelm," Doctor Noergaard calls him (and it's weird but he lets it slide), "pain is still real even if it has no physiological cause. The same goes for its lack and the suffering this has caused you. I'd urge you to press charges, but…"

Ah, now this he knows how to deal with. "Rich people," Noiz says with a disdainful smirk, "we're a pain."

"Good news, brother! All your medical checks have come through just fine, perfectly normal on all measures. You're officially ready to start work!"

"Whatever. Still don't get why they were necessary in the first place."

"It's company policy. For insurance and things."

"And 'things', you say. Like to make sure you don't hire any crazed killers? You're so sure I passed the psych eval, huh."

Theo reddens, cheeks puffing out childishly and making him look all his seventeen years. "Of course I'm sure," he mumbles. "I've got the report right here, it's fine."

"So basically I'm all right to work for my abusers as long as I don't show any signs of wanting them to pay for their crimes."

"That's-!"

"Just kidding," Noiz says. It's deadpan; there's no hint of 'kidding' in his voice at all.

Even though Noiz doesn't resent his brother's inaction – there was nothing he could have done, after all – there's a part of him, a monster locked in chains, that wants to share his suffering. With Theo, with Aoba, with anyone who will listen so he knows his voice is not just static in the void. It's a small part that wants to hurt others the way he has been hurt. A selfish, stunted part. A child locked in a room, crying and crying and screaming without being heard and eventually thinking, "If I can't leave, I'll trap them in with me." We'll know pain together, that part of him thinks. He'd abducted the sympathetic tutor who used to come, and from then on no one entered the room, not even the maids to clean. They gave him a computer and delivered his lessons online. His sympathetic tutor called him a monster before she left, and he never saw her again.

That's the small part. Thankfully that's just the small part. The large part wants to protect his loved ones; to make sure they never have to go through such hardships. What's weird is that the parts of him coexist, so that he wants both at the same time in a way that's…

"Contrary." Theo whines, "Now you're just being contrary."

Noiz shrugs. "It's in my nature."

(That night he tells Theo, "I'm glad they didn't get to you. I'm glad they didn't get to warp you like they warped me." And Theo, wrapped in his own protective delusions, pretends not to know the true extent of what Noiz means.)

He goes back to Midorijima for Aoba, and when all the dust has settled, Noiz tells his lover about his condition, or lack thereof.

"I never had a condition," he says plainly. "Do you feel cheated now? It was all in my head, just like Rhyme."

But Aoba, being Aoba, merely purses his lips in contemplation before saying, "I don't think that's true. I mean, it was true that you couldn't feel; you weren't lying to me. It was definitely a condition." Aoba nods and places a hand on Noiz's arm. "Psychological conditions count too. Maybe it started in your mind, but the effects were real."

Aoba's words are just like the doctor's. For some reason, Noiz is relieved.

Aoba needs constant reassurance. It's annoying at the same time that it's endearing.

They were fine for a while when they first got to Germany and it was just the two of them and sometimes Theo. They were fine even when Noiz returned to work full time while Aoba started taking German lessons and adventuring out on his own. It's only when Noiz starts bringing Aoba to work parties as his plus one that the old insecurities resurface.

"My German is shit and I look terrible in a suit," Aoba says. "All I do is smile and nod politely like some sort of fucking cliché fantasy geisha wife."

"So don't," Noiz says with a shrug. It's obvious, isn't it? If Aoba doesn't want people to think he's meek, which he's not, then he shouldn't act meek, which, again, he's not. "Unless I get some roleplay service out of this?"

"Pervert! You don't care at all about your reputation? If I act up, it's on you."

Left unspoken is the fact that Aoba feels overwhelmed by the kind of dates the other businessmen bring to these functions – leggy supermodels, society wives decked out in more jewelry than sense, the occasional vacant-eyed boytoy. True, it's a competition of sorts, but Noiz has always thought he came out on top by being one of the few who didn't have to buy his significant other like a prostitute.

Aoba is gorgeous because he's Aoba, because he's real and his love is real. "What do you even see in me?" Noiz wants to ask. "What do you even see in me that would make you blind to the fact that it's you who's too good for me?"

He doesn't, of course. Ask, that is. Noiz doesn't ask that because he's an adult now, professional now. There's a certain amount of dignity/composure/whatever the fuck he's supposed to hold, and that includes not showing his frustration in such an obviously childish way. (Businessmen, though, or so Noiz has learned, are often extremely childish in other ways, so it is this behavior that he will choose to emulate.)

Noiz clicks his tongue in annoyance. He says, in the slightly condescending tone he uses to order coffee from incompetent assistants, "My reputation doesn't matter. It'll probably go up once they see what a hardass my fantasy geisha wife is. Roundhouse someone in the gut for me, darling."

"Now you're just teasing me! Well, sorry for being worried about you!"

"It sounds less like you're worried than that you want me to stop loving you so you can prove your fears correct."

"Th-that's not—"

"It's too bad; I'll just love you more. The more your fears tell you to push me away, the more I'll love you."

"What kind of logic is that? Why?" And, in mumbles, he says, "And how can you even say something so embarrassing?"

"To spite you."

Aoba is too shocked to even respond. He merely stares, wide-eyed, lips flapping wordlessly.

"I'll love you to spite you. You look like a fish."

"Shut up, brat! Shut up and explain yourself!"

"That's contrary."

"You know what I mean."

Noiz can't help the amused huff that escapes his lips before he speaks. "I lived to spite my parents, so I could shove my existence in their faces. Before that, I think I made myself stop feeling pain to spite them for never caring about me. I'm a spiteful person; deal with it."

"…That is such a bratty thing to say." Aoba is trying to fight back a blush, though, so it was probably the right thing as well. Noiz smirks.

"Really? I thought it was assertive. Proactive, maybe. One of those keywords they're trying to get me to use in meetings. It was very adult, I'm sure."

"Oh god, are all businessmen brats? What are they teaching you in those meetings?"

"I don't know if I can let you go now that you know our darkest secret. You'll have to stay by my side from now on."

"Oh god, that was cheesy. I didn't think it was possible for you to get worse…"

"Besides, you love it."

Aoba's face is in his palms, but he might have muttered something that sounded like, "I do."