Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out, all will be alright. You do not control me anymore. My body is mine, and any reaction I have is not wrong! No fear, no panic, no shakes. This is my body and my body to use as I please. It is mine to share. My urges are not disgusting or scary, and should be indulged on with her. She has given so much to help and she deserves much more than what I have given-

"Gamagoori, are you okay?"

He let a breath out, rolling over to face Mako as she ran a comforting hand down his shoulder. It was his idea to have her sleep here with him to help him shake the fear he had of this stage, when they would eventually come here to finally finish their acts. She lay cuddled up against a pillow between them, her pajama top opened to show enough skin to send a shiver through his body like a gunshot, but it was warming and sent a pleasant message to his mind. A spoil to their long two weeks of work, he finally could have some sexual urge without backlash, and he reveled in the feel of that warmth crawling its way through his body, the unfamiliar reaction giving him goosebumps each time they happened.

"I'm okay, go back to sleep"

For two long, purposely painful weeks, they worked at cracking at his fearful shields and repairing him back to a place where he was comfortable with his body and his urges. For two of those days they worked on his body, the upper torso more specifically, and worked out kinks in the shield about being touched above the waist in ways that sent urges through him. Through Mako's explorations and methods, she burned through the fear by purposely triggering it, keeping Gamagoori deep in work on fighting back and correcting his fear. Stumbles and mistakes happened, seeing that Mako found an erogenous zone along his neck closer to his shoulders, and their progress was stalled when Mako persisted on pushing the sensitive spot but they digressed, especially with 'the new moan button', as Mako put it after finding his erogenous zones. It brought about much post-calm down cuddling and spooning, another step they took to relax Gamagoori into the swing of things involved with sexual activity. So far, results showed promise for their future.

The rest besides their last two days was spend cementing Mako's work, all the while she was getting him comfortable with post-sex stuff she had learned from her family. Their last two was their days of rest and preparation for the next stage of combating his erotophobia. Tonight was their last night before jumping back on to the train mid-morning tomorrow.

Mako rubbed at her eyes as she sat up using her other arm. "Nope! You were having another internal battle again, I can tell. Your hand is still shaking."

She was ultimately right, he was still shaking. He moved so that his head was rested on her lap as if she were a human pillow, stretched out between her legs. He looked up into Mako's eyes before shutting his, sighing in relief as Mako slowly combed her hands through his hair in her usual method to help him calm down from an anxiety high. The way her nails trailed over his scalp somehow was comforting, and kept him at ease as the panic faded away once more and his shaking ceased. He opened his eyes again and looked up at Mako with a small smile played across his lips.

"Thank you once again Mako" he thanked her. Mako's smile came with her usual bright light, head tilted to the side as she did so.

"You're welcome. I got you Ira, no matter what you bring to the table, I'll be there to fight it and kicks its butt"

Gamagoori couldn't help but smile wider, still never gotten sick of her spirit and drive. "Then prepare soon for a fight to the death. Tomorrow we finally start lower torso and finally...f-finally..."

"Stop! Stop, no triggering late at night! Shush, shuuu, it's okay. Yep we're going lower, but not right now. Right now, we're keeping calm and catching our sleep before the big time. It's okay. I got you Gamagoori. I promised you I would never rush you unless you tell me to. Relax, think of what is to happen in the future, and remember that Mako has you no matter what happens"

Gamagoori found himself blinking back tears, his fear bubbling underneath a moment of breathlessness and freedom. You have stayed and supported me always, and yet you do not ask anything in return. If anything right now, you are stronger than me. And because of that I adore you for your strength, loyalty, devotion, care and love toward me. I love you for these facts, Mako.

"I love you too Ira" Mako whispered, leaning down to kiss him softly. "I love you with all your faults and fears"

Gamagoori's tears fell as he kissed back softly, his confession of love murmured against her lips several times. She matched each and every one happily, brushing away his tears and whispering to him that it was okay. These were happy tears for the fact that he was not alone in his distress. His fear, his cowardice. Mako was his cane, caretaker, and lover and these forces were now keeping him high and healing him.

"Get some sleep," Mako ordered as she sat up again, "I'll be here if you get hit in the middle of the night"

Gamagoori smiled once more before setting his head into a comfortable position in Mako's lap and closing his eyes, doing as Mako requested and thought about the future of them. As he sank back into rest, he slipped into his dreams once more and sighed in relief as it manifested into the one thing he hoped for. His panic started to bubble up but he could control it down enough to take in the dream.

He was staring into the wide, bright brown eyes of Mako, who was laying up on him clad in only a wide open button-up shirt. She buttoned one of the middle buttons and sat up so she could lean against him, and sighed in satisfaction. He realized then that he was naked from the waist up and Mako really only had that button-up shirt on, no underwear in sight besides what looked like pants hidden by the couch they lay in. His dream led him to bring her closer, wrapping his arms around her midsection. She giggled before looking up at him with her big doe eyes.

"That was amazing Ira" Mako sighed, closing her eyes, "Mhhhm I also like that I can just run around now in only a shirt"

His heart pounded deftly in his chest, a familiar burning rising from his core. He could feel his fear poke and prod at the back of his thoughts, but it was easily brushed aside, his barriers keeping them at bay. He focused in on the flush on Mako's cheeks and the state of her wild hair, realizing that his dream was showing him a future where he and Mako had-

"I'm just glad that we finally did it" he replied, his dream keeping his thoughts shut down, "Thank you Mako"

"No problem! I told you I would get help you fight that fear! And we were able to conquer it for a night!"

Gamagoori lost all control the instant the realization hit him with its full force and sensory upload. He was body-slammed out of the colorful, perfect dream and into the dark, seething strings of his fear, locked away in a cradle of his devastating horror to his urges. He was swallowed in to the dark and cold where he screamed and screeched for freedom, only to have his fears tighten around him like a vice. He was put into the hands of the blackness and anxiety of his mind, entrusted to the dark hands he fed for so long.

'Gamagoori!'

A tear within the fear and black appeared with the sudden arrival of the voice, and Gamagoori grappled to the familiar bell-like sound of it, trying desperately to reach it before the crack sealed away and locked him in until he could chew his way out. His mind fought against him and his wishes, paralyzing him to keep him from getting any closer. He was stronger than before, way more when this event started to many years ago. He killed the tendrils locking him down and ran for the light breaking through the black and shattering it into shards of stained grey glass. He was free of the feral fearful nightmare, and he finally ran out of his subconscious.

He gasped like he was taking his last breath when he woke up, eyes snapping open and bolting up into a seated position quickly as his heart beat a mile a minute, thoughts racing this way and that, his mind a static-filled mess presently. He could Mako screech from one of the other rooms and rush in at her quickest pace, nearly overshooting her jump on to the bed and almost ran face first into the headboard of his bed. She wrapped herself around him as he panted, doubled over with his chin nearly hitting his knees as he held his head near the bed below him. She held him as he slowly returned to reality, still caught partly in the black web of his phobia capturing his neck like a vampire, sucking away what calm and control he had.

"It's okay...it's okay, you're awake," Mako kept reminding him, never once letting him go, "I'm right here, open for conversation when you're free. Take the time to break out of it."

Gamagoori did as she said, slowly regaining what he had before the panic shock. He slowly uncurled from his near fetal position and leaned into the arms of Mako. She chuckled under her breath and curled up against him, balancing the weight he put on her on her shoulders. He slowly broke from the last lingering cobwebs and truly woke up, letting the tears he had felt burning free to fall. Mako was quick to intercept them before they fell very far.

Mako didn't push for information, neither did she walk out like she had no business with his silence. She simply sat with him, curled up beside him as he slowly came back to calm, his breathing exercises seeming to help him return to the present. Little by little, he took his weight off of Mako and held his own, and only then did he fall back on to the bed. Mako followed, but took her honorary place on his chest, and looked up at him with a worried expression.

"Ira..." she did not say anymore, simply tucking herself into his expansive chest. He rested his chin on her head and slowly repeated his breathing exercise before finally gathering up his willpower and spoke to her.

"A dream..."

Mako scooted away just a bit, to get a better angle to look into his eyes truly, a hand brushing along his jawline. "What happened?"

At the mention of it, by her lips, the fear from it seemed to chuckle and reappear, threatening him and pulling at his thoughts dangerously. He shut his eyes quickly, remembering the good these talks did for him, how they helped him build resistance to the fear and how it gave him emotional and burden relief. The tangible threads of fear hissed and shrank away for now, forcibly fought away and put down. He opened his eyes again and couldn't help but smile when he realized that Mako was trying to help her own way, leaving little kisses along his jaw. When she realized he stepped back from his mental wars, she respectively ended her kisses and waited for Gamagoori. He sat up again, and ran a hand through his disheveled hair, Mako quickly joining him by his side.

"It wasn't anything horrible or dark. It was the exact opposite," Gamagoori explained, his voice soft and cautious, expecting the worst from his fear, "...I dreamed about us, in the future..."

Mako's mouth opened enough to make a oval-like 'O', understanding then what his dream had included. "Graphic?"

"Post...just us, in the afterglow of it all, proud of ourselves that we finally conquered my fears. When my subconscious realized the context of it...I lost control and it took over again" Gamagoori sank into an out-of-place depression that wrapped him in a chilled embrace, "Mako, nothing is getting better. What I'm comfortable with now haunts me in my sleep. All I'm doing is pushing my issue to different places in me"

He didn't expect Mako's hands to roughly grab him by the cheeks, forcing him to look directly into the endless brown of her eyes. She had a fire smoldering within the depths of her eyes, her fiery red-hot hidden talent coming alive.

"Ira Gamagoori, what has happened to your legendary resolve?! Have you really submitted so badly to this fear that you believe that all we're doing it playing shuffleboard with your insecurities? This is not the real you! You're filled with resolve to accomplish and complete anything! But since we've set out to fix this, you keep sinking deeper when it hits you. Is...is it because I'm failing you as a support system? Is it because we really aren't doing anything?" By this point, tears fell in large volumes down Mako's face.

"Are we just wasting our time with this Ira or are you going to stand tall in the face of these demons and tell them to go back to Hell?! Are...are you going to let them torment you to the point of depressive death or are you going to fight, with me by your side holding your sword's sheath and raring to help you battle them? Are you simply going to retreat away into your fortress again as you have done for so many years? Ira Gamagoori, tell me, are you really there or has a ghost eclipsed by his fear's shadow taken your place? You said yourself when we began our journey that it was going to be hard. I don't care if I must push you passed limits never thought of, but I refuse as a friend, a support, and as a lover to let you be swallowed by it again!

"Now what has become of Ira Gamagoori that he cowers in the face of a challenge? Weakness is to be expected but you are letting it win on purpose; you're caving to its requests like you're willingly allowing someone to probe your most private thoughts. Gamagoori...Ira, please don't fall back into the fear! I'm here to help, I'll be here to catch you! Please...please don't say those negative things. They're wrong. We're making progress, we're getting you comfortable in your own skin again. You aren't just moving your fears around, we're facing them and removing them. What we're doing now wouldn't be possible unless we made progress!"

Mako's words shot straight through his heart, directly embedding into his soul. Every single word she yelled at him was right. Everything she said made sense to him, and all he could do in response, stunned into silence, was take her hands into his and completely envelop her in a soft embrace. She sighed into his chest as she returned the embrace, resting in Gamagoori's lap without a single incident, much less a fearless shiver from the closeness. Instead his entire body shook as the floodgates he had built up opened wide for the public, and he broke down in silent, painful sobbing. Mako accepted her duty once more and let him cry without judgement or talk, simply holding him as he held her, countless tears falling down his face. He fought against the sounds accompanying his cries, a few slipping from his hold.

"Thank you Mako...thank you so much. You are perfect"

Mako smiled softly, the brightness in her smile returning twofold. "Not perfect, just Mako. Just usual, lovable Mako"

Gamagoori kissed a soft line down her neck. "And I love you just like that."

Mako whimpered under the pressure of his lips, and Gamagoori felt the urge to do more return with a welcome burning, not a single fearful reaction following suit. He pressed his lips down harder on her neck, feeling the soft pattering of her heart through the vein under her skin. He felt comfortable with this, wanting to continue. Mako murmured affections under the moan she gave as Gamagoori tried out marking her, leaving little hickies along her collarbone. He slid his hands up her sides, pressing his fingers against her skin to give her the caresses she so deserved. Her body shivered under his hands, her back arching with each lovebite put on her. Gamagoori's hands found the underneath of her shirt quickly and went up, moving up until they were finger length from her breasts.

Heat boiled in his stomach. An uncomfortable, angry heat, searing through him with no retreat. Fear blossomed into his thoughts uninvited, his body reacting against the negative stimuli. He moved quickly, the fear pulling him one direction. His hands shot out from her shirt and hovered without purpose. He ceased marking her and sat frozen until the shakes started. Mako went from her aroused state back to comfort mode, helping Gamagoori as a minor panic attack swept through him.

"Hey...," Mako murmured as Gamagoori recovered from it, "you actually acted on an urge! Due progress for the hard work."

Gamagoori nodded as he brushed away building tears. More progress, more things he could do, more freedom from the cage his fear created. He rested his forehead against hers, grateful for her positive words and encouragement. She smiled wide as he whispered his thanks for her comfort and help for the millionth time. Mako brought his forehead to her lips, leaving a lingering kiss.

"Always. I'll always be here for you," she murmured as she looked into Gamagoori's eyes, "No matter what. Do you still want to go through what we planned tomorrow, after all of this?"

Gamagoori turned to his thoughts for a moment, naturally leaning into Mako's hand as it brushed down the right side of his face. He understood her worry for him. Tonight was stressful enough, and he was already steaming toward sleeping. It would be logical to call off tomorrow's advancement of breaking his fearful cage, to give him a buffer to prepare for the hard hits he expected to receive with the experimentation. He expected a day full of much trial and error, leaving room for his panic attacks and shutdown that could occur. He knew tomorrow would not be as easy as these past two weeks.

Gamagoori knew, however, that he needed to break free. He needed to make his dream come true, he wanted his dream to be his reality. He needed to stand back on his feet for good, to see the world from outside the prison that trapped him.

"Absolutely. Tomorrow, we knock my fear off its feet and break it. I will not let our dream fade away, not now nor ever. Tomorrow, we move a step closer to what I, what we, want to do."

Gamagoori grabbed Mako's hands and put them between them. "Tomorrow is the day we're freed from my cages of fear!"

Mako nodded furiously in complete agreement, a glint of determination and passion in her eyes. Gamagoori had that exact glint and couldn't help but pull Mako back into an embrace. Mako sighed in relief as she curled up against his chest, glad to hear his heartbeat patter softly. She hooked her arms up under his, her hands gripping his back to get as close to him as possible. Gamagoori tried to do the same, tucking her within his arms and resting his chin on top of her head. Not another word passed between them, their hearts speaking for them. As fatigue tookthe reigns, they slid silently back under the covers of their bed, resumed cuddling, and fell asleep without another thought.

However, a few minutes after Gamagoori fell into the hands of the sandman, Mako opened her eyes and peered up at him, watching his face relax into the bliss of a dreamless sleep. She kissed the tip of his nose and adjusted her place against his chest before letting the sound of his heart start to lull her to sleep.

"Tomorrow...you're closer to the freedom you deserve..." she mumbled before yawning and finally letting sleep take her into its embrace, blissfully dreaming about the things to come when they succeeded.