Damaris

1.

Kou's tea is delicate and Chinese. It tastes fragile, like flowers and wind with a strange, bitter edge when Kubota forgets and lets the leaves steep too long. Kou looks at him over his nose and says flatly, "It is a risk."

"I can pay you," Kubota offers.

"You have quite a tab, Kubota-kun." He sighs. "And your kitten does not seem to like me."

"Sorry. Could you come tomorrow?"

"He will not like me any better then, I'm afraid." Kou sips at his tea, his eyes mild as he looks over his glasses at him. "Why did you pick him up?"

Kubota fiddles with his teacup and does not say anything for a few long seconds. "I felt like he was necessary. It didn't occur to me that I had a choice." His tea is tepid, the cups porcelain cool against his hand. He does not explain about a gutted stray cat or an egotistical need to atone for anything, but he thinks of a pale, thin boy and his sharp cat-eyes. "I wanted to bring him home." He sets the cup down and sits back. "I'm a selfish person," he says with a smile, looking up to meet Kou's eyes.

Kou hmms and tucks his sleeves out of the way as he gathers the tea. "Kubota-kun is kinder than he thinks," he says quietly. "I will come tomorrow."

.

2.

Before Kubota is Kubo-chan, he's a creepy presence that never really leaves, an itch on the back of Tokitoh's neck. He's mild and unsettling and lets Tokitoh have anything he demands, and it aches with the ill-fit.

Tokitoh doesn't sleep at night for a long time after he wakes up. He sits with a blanket over his head, his back against the wall and his good hand crushed to his chest, his heartbeat loud in his ears. He sits and watches the door, his muscles twisted up tight and ready to run, but the door doesn't open and when he wakes up in the morning curled up with the blanket clutched around him, the door still hasn't opened. Even on the mornings when he wakes with his voice strangled like he's been screaming, or his heart is pounding and his mind jittery from a shadowy nightmare broken off in the middle, he is alone, and he is grateful. When he creeps out, his hair rumpled and sticking up, Kubota is there, asking kindly what he wants for breakfast, even though it's way past noon.

Later, as spring finally blooms and Kubota's broken arm heals, Tokitoh forces himself to offer Kubota's bed back to him, and he stands there toeing the carpet and his ears burning and feeling like a total jerk, and finally, Kubota pets his hair and says it's okay. So Tokitoh is indignant and insulted, his agonized, gracious gesture thrown back in his face, and that night, they lie beside each other, awkward and awake in the dark.

But Tokitoh falls asleep, because he always does eventually, and he dreams of something he can't remember. And when he wakes in blind panic, violent and covered in cold sweat, he is not alone, and Kubota strokes his hair and tells him it's all right.

He thinks he is more grateful for that.

.

3.

After Kubota bandages Kasai's hand, they sit in silence. Kasai frowns at the flowering stain of blood through the bandage, and he says, "Makoto, really?" Kubota gives him a surprised look and Kasai gestures back at the door. "That. Are you really keeping him?"

"He's interesting."

"Interesting doesn't cut it. You look like you have the neighbor's kid scared to death."

"Shouta is a brave boy," Kubota says blandly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Kasai stares hard at him, his brow knit. Kubota meets his eyes and does not blink, and finally, Kasai shakes his head, rubbing at his temples as he rummages for a fresh cigarette. "It's not that simple, kid. This is dangerous stuff. I don't know how much I can help you."

"Don't feel like you have to."

Muttering something like bullshit under his breath, Kasai shakes his head again. "Just don't say I didn't warn you. You could end up in jail or dead because of that boy. It's a total gamble."

Kubota smiles. "Duly noted."

Any chance that's a gamble isn't much of a chance at all.

But then again, Kubota likes to gamble.

.

4.

Tokitoh is a jewel, a flower, a flame in the shadows. Kubota wants to give him the world. He wants to take both Tokitoh's hands in his own and pray over them, promise him things like the dawn. Love closes his heart and makes him stupid, and he knows he is stupid because he thinks that he doesn't care.

As time wears on, Tokitoh sleeps more and bitches less, his face thin and exhausted, his hand clutched close to his chest. Kubota thinks he might be sick, but Kou touches delicate fingers to Tokitoh's pressure points and shakes his head helplessly, his lips a thin line of apology, so Kubota does nothing.

Sleeping Tokitoh makes Kubota remember him thin and nameless, and he wonders, briefly, about sleeping Minoru: a boy whose life never involved Kubota or knew the pain of an alien, beasts hand. Kubota traces the line of Tokitoh's jaw in the air over his skin, the distance from skin to skin too wide to breach, and he finally stretches out beside Tokitoh, touching him at the points of shoulder and hip and knee, and he sleeps with Tokitoh's scent deep in his nose.

.

5.

Tokitoh has dreams that he does not tell Kubota, and he thinks that maybe he's gotten better at lying and saying that no, nothing's wrong, even when he wakes with his stomach lurching and he staggers to the bathroom and throws up and sits for a long time in front of the toilet, his knees trembling and stupid tears streaming from his eyes, or when he jerks awake feverish but always ready to run, his heart banging against his ribs and terror edging at his nerves.

He's stopped telling Kubota his dreams altogether, after the first few debacles of Kubota's patient silence and Tokitoh's frustration as he tried to explain why he was scared. Mostly, he dreams of darkness and an awful, yawning dread in his guts, time that belongs to shadowy figures and his stupid fucking hand, but sometimes he dreams of things that are sort of okay, and he wakes up feeling normal and alive. He thinks it's stupid, but he's afraid that if he tells Kubota of this hope, it will disappear.

(But what do they need hope for, anyway.)