He could still feel that droplet on his face.

Without a doubt, it had been a tear, a tiny salty drop, expressing the grief Touka couldn't put into words. Still, Kaneki had understood the implications of the wet spot on his cheek. His behaviour had hurt her. He'd hurt her a whole lot more than he had ever imagined he could. He had hurt her a lot more than she would ever let on.

Somehow, it made him feel worse. Kaneki hadn't known that was even possible at this point in his life.

Slowly, he got up from his spot on the concrete, limbs reacting delayed as if he had just woken from deep slumber and his muscle memory had yet to wake up as well. The spot on his cheek was burning, a steady reminder of his shame, of making her cry when all he wanted to do was shield her from this cruel world and keep her safe.

He followed her.

Kaneki didn't really decide on doing that, one minute he was heading back to his hideout, the next he found himself looking for wisps of blue hair and the light florally scent of that one detergent Touka always used on her clothes. His senses had been getting better the more he'd fed but they were still dull compared to natural ghouls', still, it didn't take him too long to find her trail and follow it.

She wasn't heading back to Anteiku, as he had thought as first. Then again, the salty undertones in the air around her told him that maybe she didn't want to appear at the café like this.

"Didn't I tell you to stay the fuck away?!" Touka suddenly turned around, stopping dead in her tracks and shouted at him, hair whipping angrily with her forceful motions and Kaneki braced himself for another punch.

It never came.

Instead, Touka seemed to fold in on herself, her whole posture dropping, her anger dissipating into the air like steam. She didn't even try to hide the wet trails on her cheeks or the puffiness of her eyes. She just hung her head, mouth pressed into a firm line as her shoulders trembled.

"Didn't I tell you not to come back?"

Her voice was quiet, almost meek, so unlike her usual snarl that would accompany such a statement.

"I made a choice," Kaneki started, uncertain of her reaction but very sure about his decision. If he was being honest he had wanted this for quite some time now. Still, it had taken Touka kicking his ass for him to realise it. He had been too determined, too stubborn, to listen to his gut feeling at first. But her harsh words had deconstructed his carefully assembled wall of determination and drive that had pushed him further and further away from his old life in the last few months.

Now, he just wanted to stop.

Sighing, Kaneki steeled himself for whatever might be thrown at him after his statement.

"I want to come back to Anteiku."

He knew he was barely audible, but Touka's head snapped up anyway.

Her wet eyes fixed on his face and the tight line of her mouth was pressed together even harder. Her lips were turning an unhealthy looking white with the force of the action.

"I want to come back," he repeated as the silence became unbearable for him. "I did what I had to do and ..." I really miss you. "Hinami really misses you," he said, scratching his jawline. "She wants to be back at Anteiku, all of us together, like it used to be."

"Yeah," Touka finally said, the wet sheen of her eyes finally gone but once again replaced with subtle anger, her meek voice replaced with a snarl. "Hinami told me that she missed being at Anteiku."

Kaneki frowned at her biting words but he couldn't decipher what she really wanted to say. Why would she be angry at his admission that Hinami missed her?

Maybe it wasn't about Hinami.

Maybe...

Maybe she really didn't want him to return, just like she had told him earlier.

"Oh," he said in a defeated little huff of breath at the realisation that maybe he had read her completely wrong after all.

People didn't just cry in sadness or grief. Some people cried in happiness, like Hinami had when he promised to teach her every day. Some people cried in laughter, like Hide did all the time when he found something hysterical.

And other people cried in anger.

"I understand," Kaneki finally said after several minutes of silence. His heart was almost beating out of his chest in mortification and something else and he wanted to claw it out of his ribcage so it would finally stop hurting. He ran his thumb along the length of his index finger, an itch to crack his knuckles making his hands tremble. "I do understand and it's fine with me." Crack. "I'm fine on my own anyway."

As if on autopilot his hand came up to his face and he touched his chin, an action that somehow settled his uneasy stomach.

"You are such a fucking idiot," Touka sighed, her mouth relaxing and her lips started to colour again, the white disappearing and leaving blotchy pink in its wake. She chuckled deep in her throat and her eyes slipped closed. She seemed almost unhinged, with her head thrown back like that and hair dishevelled, revealing her right eye to Kaneki.

"You insufferable, dense idiot," she continued and her head snapped forward, only to bury her face in her palms. "Can you, for once, not try to be such a martyr and do what you actually want to do?"

Kaneki furrowed his brows.

"I want to-"

"Protect us all, I know, I get it. You've said it before," she interrupted him and glared at him. There was a glint in the corners of her eyes and Kaneki felt even more confused. "You want to protect us all but you forget one thing. We don't need your protection." Her hands fell from her face and revealed fresh trails of liquid.

Had he made her cry again?

"We don't need it and we don't want it!" A tired chuckle ripped from her throat, her whole body jolting with the sound, as if she was too exhausted to keep herself in check. "We don't want you to play the martyr, we just want-"

Touka swallowed hard, leaving her sentence hanging without ever finishing it. Kaneki just stared on, unable to react. She was just repeating her words from earlier but without the dull ache of her fists hitting his flesh he didn't have anything to focus on, just her voice and the meaning behind her words.

"Touka..." he started but trailed off, because really, what was he supposed to say to her?

"Stop trying to please everyone, stupid Kaneki," Touka spat at him. "What is it that you want, hm? Can you even tell me?"

What did he want, really?

"I want..."

I want to go home.

But where was home?

Touka shook her head, a tiny sad smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"You don't even know what you want, do you?"

His head dropped. Wasn't he pathetic?

Crack.

"No," he said before he could swallow the word down, like he usually would. But her words left him feeling more raw than the fight he had had the other day ever could and his chest threatened to rip open and splash his pain right in her face, for all the world to see. "I don't know what I want."

Touka sucked in a gulp of breath at his words and Kaneki felt transparent all of a sudden, as if she could see him clearly for the first time, stripped down to his very bone, hiding nothing.

He was so weak, he couldn't even be strong for the people he cared about anymore.

Such a weak waste of space, the voice in his head snarled nastily.

He could feel his knees buckling and the bony insect legs in his back curling underneath his skin, ready to rip through and have their way with him.

Weak weak weak weak weak weak.

Kaneki sank to his knees as the screaming rose in pitch and his back exploded in itchy pain.

So weak, you can't even protect them from your ugly existence. They will all di-

"It's okay, Kaneki," he heard through the haze of dozens of tiny legs scratching about his inner ear. "It's okay to not know."

"T-touka?" he asked, unsure of his surroundings, the only thing clear in his mind the twitching motion in his back.

Her fingers were soft yet sure as they circled around his wrists, carefully prying his seizing fingers from his white hair without ripping out any.

"You can come back to Anteiku and find out what you really want, okay?"

She said it so gently, so gingerly, he wanted to cry. And he probably did.

He nodded, agreeing to her words and the pain in his back subsided a little as her thumbs stroked along his racing pulse.

"Good," Touka said and made to get up. When had she knelt down next to him? "Let's get you home, then."

Her fingers slipped from his wrists and Kaneki quickly caught one hand before Touka was out of reach, acting on an impulse he'd never had before.

"Touka?" he asked, voice meek and raspy.

"What is it?" she asked way too gently and Kaneki wondered how much he must have scared her just now, to make her act so cautious towards him.

"There's ... one thing I think I want."

"What?" she prodded as he didn't go on immediately.

"I want to k-" but he discarded the thought of spelling it out for her and instead got up and moved forward, determined to act on his gut feeling for a change.

The kiss me died on her lips as he touched his lips to hers, the sweet and chaste connection warming him up quicker than her coffee ever could and he could feel the same burning heat spreading from her lips to her face, back to where his hands were suddenly buried in her hair, fingertips softly pressing into the back of her head.

He could still feel droplets on his face, but he was sure, this time they were neither in sadness nor anger.

to assuage - to soothe, calm, relieve, ease, appease, satisfy etc.