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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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."

He wonders, briefly, if Saki's death had this impact on Yousuke. He knows how hard it's been for Naoki to do much of anything at all, especially with everyone telling him he didn't have to, after his sister died--

He clenches his jaw hard, focusing on how the muscles in his face feel like they're going to snap. If Nanako--

Shaking his head, he gets up again and starts to put the things Yousuke brought him away.

Saki was different. Saki wasn't as bad as this, he thought. Just a girl he had a crush on, who didn't like him at all. Nanako was Souji's sister, and none of them doubted it for a minute.

For a moment, Yousuke sees that agony on his face. Should he address it, or...?

"You aren't gonna eat any of that?"

"It's one in the morning." And as easy as it would be to microwave this stuff, he just doesn't care enough. "I'll save it for tomorrow."

He pauses, shaking himself. "Unless... Are you hungry?"

"Ah...no," he admits, and realizes it was kind of stupid to think Souji would be. He was just full of bright ideas today, huh. "You're right."

The florescent light in the ceiling hums. It makes the room feel sterile and un-homey-- it reminded him of a doctor's office or a teacher's breakroom. A place where you have to confess.

He sighs.

"I know I'm probably getting in your way. But-- Well, sometimes I feel like all I'm good at is getting up in people's space when I shouldn't be. Haha..."

"...I probably need it." After what Yousuke saw upstairs, he really can't deny that without being a liar.

That makes Yousuke let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. As usual, he hangs on Souji's approval. And this wouldn't do any good if he wasn't willing.

"Then... What's on your mind?"

A ridiculously weak attempt to get through a massive wall of stoicism and solidarity, like pitching a rock at Fort Knox.

"Nanako."

That was too obvious. He closes the cabinet he was putting the food into and turns, leaning back against the counter. Staring at the floor, he tries to find something else to say, but there's no script conveniently written for him down there.

After a minute he closes his eyes and swallows. He can still faintly taste blood in the back of his throat. "I took too long."

"We did everything we could," he said, like he had said it a hundred times before. Most likely to himself, "it's like Kanji said in the hospital. If we went too fast, something else bad may've happened, like one of us dying..."

His words dry up in his throat. It was just a slip of the tongue, but it spoke volumes about what they were all thinking. He feels like sinking into the floor out of shame. This was just going to make it worse.

"I didn't mean--" his voice squeaks, and he swallows hard. Posture withering, he looks down to his knees as well, "she's not dead. She's not gonna die."

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