eatsyourscience | For my fine aquatic Otter friend

For my fine aquatic Otter friend

It's been two days.

Two days alone in this house, without Nanako's cheerful "welcome home!". Without the nightly quiz shows on the television downstairs, without dirty dishes in the sink, without the simple knowledge that he isn't the only one there. It's unbearable. Even Dojima's absence, as common an occurrence as it is, seems more obvious than normal.

Souji hates being alone. He'd forgotten what it was like, or has been letting himself think he has. The first night, after coming home from the hospital, he convinces himself to remain calm and settles for pacing first the living room and then his bedroom restlessly. He's gotten used to staying up late, sometimes only sleeping four or five hours a night, so it doesn't faze him when he barely gets about two hours total--stolen ten minutes at a time when he sits down on the couch in his room and considers calling someone, but doesn't.

That first day is a blur, and so is the second night, but in a different way. He knows what he spend the night doing. He knows because his room is a disaster. Everything that he could break, everything he could rip or throw or flip or otherwise destroy has been. He barely remembers doing any of it and he can't bring himself to care when he wakes up on the floor in the middle of the mess on the second day. He doesn't say anything to his friends because if he does they'll worry about him, and he doesn't want that. There are more important things to be focused on right now than his self-indulgent tantrums. Besides, if they knew he was faltering this much, and now when he most needs to be the leader--

And now it's the end of the second day and the start of the third night, and there's nothing left to do except notice how empty the house is around him.

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Souji's phone is somewhere under his desk. He has no idea where the battery is and he hadn't bothered to look when he lost it. He'd have plenty of time between not sleeping and school to find it and see if he'd missed any calls or messages.

He shifts restlessly on the floor. In hindsight, it probably wouldn't have been better to sleep on the couch, but he doesn't care enough to move. He's not sure he wants to sleep anyway.

He doesn't pick up, as expected. When Yousuke comes to his front door, he calls him three more times for good measure. If Souji didn't know someone was coming by now, that was his own fault. Like a proper burgler, he breaks in by using a using a key hidden in the backyard garden.

The house was silent. Dead. An unfortunate turn of phrase, but he couldn't think of anything more appropriate.

He swallows. He has no idea what he's up against here. What will Souji be like? During the day, he was a catatonic wearing a mask of normalcy, to put on a face for everyone to rely on and hope with. Now, however, he didn't have to be anything for anyone. Had he ever really seen that side of Souji? Maybe in glimpses, but...

When he tries to shout, he feels his voice dry up in his throat. His resolve shrivels up a bit with it. What was he doing? Idiot, he thinks again, and shakes his numbing hand, then running it through his hair. He takes a deep breath, as if to shout, but just... exhales. He tries again, but with the same result. It's only the third time that he's able to spit it out.

"Souji!"

Souji's still not asleep and the shout makes him jerk and sit up in surprise. Yousuke's in his house. Why--

...Yousuke's in his house!

He stumbles to his feet and fumbles in the dark toward the door. Normally he can navigate his room without any trouble, but this time he trips on the fallen shelves, and crashes to the floor, hitting his face on the crossbar.

There's no way that went unnoticed from downstairs, but he doesn't get up immediately. His face is throbbing and when he puts his hand to it, blood drips across it, surprisingly warm. He needs to get to his door before Yousuke does, but he stays where he is, trying to collect himself enough get there.

Yousuke jumps in surprise himself when he hears the crashing.

"Souji! Just-- hang on!"

He drops his bag of food on the floor and runs to where he remembers his room being. He feels about in the dark, and his socks slip a bit on the wooden stairs and he stumbles, but he has a railing to steady himself with. So we don't end up with a double nosebleed situation. When he gets to the top, he finds Souji's doorway with his hands and slides them around the threshold until his hand runs over the light switch, and he flips it on.

His eyes survey the room in a split second, and his mind can't process what he sees. He doesn't have the capacity. In a minute he'd have the time to figure it out.

Instead, he focuses on Souji, and forgets about everything else.

"Dude," he breathes, and gets down to his knees. He sees the blood, and there's more than worry in his voice "are you okay? I mean, your face..."

Yousuke knows that there's more wrong than just his nosebleed, but we're starting with the basics.

"It's okay." Souji's voice comes out wet and thick with the blood in his throat, and he swallows to try to clear it. "I-- Hang on..."

He shifts, fumbling for a shirt that had spilled out of the closet earlier. He uses that to sop up the blood in an attempt to keep it off of his uniform shirt.

"Oh, ew," his reply is a reflex, "don't do that. Here, wait a sec."

With his room light on, he can navigate to the bathroom easily. Yousuke grabs the entire box of tissues. He gives it to Souji after taking one to clean up a spot of blood on the floor.

Accepting the tissues, he pinches the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb.

"Thanks..." He isn't really sure what else to say, other than to start spouting excuses right away, so he says nothing and uses the nosebleed as a distraction.

It gives Yousuke some time to look around the room and gather his thoughts. He takes in the mess-- not just a mess of neglect, but a purposeful wrecking. It frightens him. It's the first time seeing him act like that. At least, seeing that he was capable of acting that way.

He can guess why. Nanako...

Yousuke sits down completely, crossing his legs and getting comfortable while Souji collects himself.

The silence that follows bothers Souji. Yousuke's almost never quiet. He waits until the bleeding starts to let up, though, before he says anything.

"Did you call me? My phone--" He glances around. It's pretty easy to guess what happened to the phone. "...I wasn't expecting you." That was pretty obvious, too.

"I called you a ton of times," he scratches the back of his neck, sheepish, but holding his ground, "sorry that it didn't get to you. I know this is kind of... in the middle of the night. But I felt like I had to."

"And I'm glad I did." Yousuke looks around the room, suggesting the reason why.

"I'm fine." He responds a little too quickly and wants to cringe at how much of a lie that probably sounds like right now. There isn't even really a way to amend that to make it sound plausible.

He gets to his feet slowly. "Let's go downstairs."

Yousuke can't blame him for wanting to leave this room. He nods in agreement, and stands up to get out of his way, taking one last look back in it as he shuts off the lights behind Souji.

"You don't have to talk to me or anything," he adds on as their takes the stairs down, "I can just... shut up, or whatever. Being alone is probably easier than having to explain."

Souji shakes his head finds the light switch downstairs with ease. He notes the bag of food Yousuke dropped, picking it up and setting it on the kitchen table.

"You brought this?"

We're ignoring it. Okay. Yousuke can run with this.

"Yeah, I did," unsure of what to do, he leans on the table with a look of indecisiveness, rapping his fingers on the wood, "Not really sure why-- just, when someone's not well, you bring food, right? Not that you're not well, but..."

Souji looks from the bag to the kitchen counter and sink. If asked, he couldn't have told Yousuke what he ate today or yesterday or any day for the last week. Whatever it was, he didn't eat it at home--nothing in the kitchen's been touched in days.

"I appreciate it."

"It's okay. You look a little... gaunt, these days," he admits, putting his hand behind his neck again. 'Gaunt' meaning emotionally, mostly. Troubled.

The air feels heavy around him. A chill runs up his spine and he straightens his neck.

"...I'm having trouble sleeping." Because that's totally all there is to it. "It'll pass."

Trouble sleeping. He nods. Makes sense. Even Yousuke had had some trouble-- hell, he was here at nearly one in the morning. That should say something.

Unsure what else to say, Souji starts to unpack the food Yousuke brought over.

It's obvious Yousuke has any idea either. He pulls out a chair and sits down, and makes an attempt at being surreptitious, but whenever Souji looks his way is the moment that he decides to look at Souji, and that's nothing but awkward.

It was obvious there was pain here, but... Well, he was a guy. He didn't know how to heal hurts like that. He'd have to know what Souji was feeling, and he didn't have that empathy. He couldn't possibly have that empathy, when he'd never been close to the situation he was in. And his leader was a stoic stone wall, as always, even in front of a disaster that he had caused. Anything to not show how he really felt...

How could he possibly help him?

Souji slumps into the seat across from Yousuke when he's got everything out of the plastic bag and looks at his hands on his knees. "It's late. Are you going to be okay for school?"

Not that they weren't used to being up late waiting to watch the Midnight Channel. It was just something to fill the silence.

"Does that really matter?"

Did it? They always continued their lives as if nothing was going on. It was part of the secret. But now it felt useless, in the face of possible defeat. Just as useless as how he felt now. Without a command, he wasn't good for anything.

"Your scores on the last exams weren't that good, were they?" He means to sound teasing, but the words come out flat. Grimacing, he rubs an eye with the heel of his hand. "I mean, once the investigation is over, you still have to go on to third year."

"I know."

Souji picked a good distraction. Yousuke felt lukewarm about school at best, and wasn't sure of his future. He often thought about the case in favor of that...

He shakes his head. That's not what's important right now.

"I meant, does it really matter right now."

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1/2 I'll finish tomorrow!

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