Their routines were the same.
They didn't drink the same coffee or take the same route to work, but in the lonely hours of the evening, before they could reasonably be alone with their thoughts, Seto and Ryou sat by the same river.
Until today, they kept a respectable distance.
At a cemetery that sort of thing was society's mandate. Here, Seto realized, fighting the rush of nausea that'd become a deep anchor in his stomach, there were no such boundaries.
"Do you remember the last time it froze?" Ryou asked softly, breath going up in soft wisps.
Seto stared at the icy patches near the water's edge and let his silence speak for itself. He shouldn't have been here mourning someone who was Mokuba's to love, but it was getting closer to Christmas and the lilies on the dining room table haunted him every morning.
How long were fresh flowers supposed to last anyway?
"I used to live overseas near a river just like this. It was basically our backyard. I told my sister every winter we would skate on it when the ice got thick enough, but it never did."
Seto spent too many minutes calculating the depth and capacity of the river. Of course it didn't.
It wouldn't.
And it shouldn't have hurt so much to hear Ryou say it like he should have known then what he knew now.
It shouldn't have cut him to realize he must have lost her as a child, because as children the world still had a little bit of magic, even if it was as thin as dream-like hope.
Children shouldn't have to lose anyone.
Children should never be lost.
"How old was she?"
When Ryou swallowed, the pain clawing its way up through his throat burned itself into Seto's memory. He would hear the desperate noises in his nightmares, remember the tense knot of tears between them while Ryou tried to keep himself together.
You did this.
You came to me.
"Eleven." The word was taut and broken in the middle.
Seto closed his eyes for a long moment and felt, for the first time in a while, the vague sense of warmth behind them. She was so young. How could the world take someone so innocent? He was still growing, he was – she was still in the prime of her life.
"I'm sorry."
Ryou shook his head, dry laughter getting stuck in the crevices of his mouth, "Don't be." He said, "Are you here for someone too?"
There's was no sense denying it, but the honesty was already too invasive. "It's different."
Ryou sat down in the frost covered grass and looked up at the sky like he expected it to start snowing. "How?"
"I didn't love him first."
Ryou forced every screaming bone in his body into silence, but even his glance said: you wouldn't be here if you didn't.
"It's terrible," Ryou said so he wouldn't push the subject, "But sometimes I get so tired of carrying the reminders."
Seto thought of the lillies and the model arc on Mokuba's bookshelf, the scrawled signature in a notebook that wasn't his own.
Nothing had made them feel more alone, especially around each other, than losing Noa.
"Yeah," He said distantly, "But someone has to."
He wished it could be him.
That Mokuba didn't have to share it.
That Ryou's loneliness didn't echo in every brief recollection on Mokuba's face when they entered shops or listened to the radio, disappearing into brave neutrality he shouldn't have known.
"What are your plans for Christmas?"
Ryou stiffened, "Why?"
"We've got about twenty open seats at the table."
"I don't need your pity."
Seto stared harder at the ice on the edges of the river, a small fraction of a massive heartache.
"We don't have a Christmas tree, but we have a box with his name on it leaning against the fireplace…and I don't want to stare at it by myself."
Ryou couldn't force himself to break the silence for several seconds. "I'll bring…cake." He said, wincing as if the dish wouldn't be a safe choice.
"Mokuba would like that."
They watched the river and held the repressed need to cry between their fingers, letting it fill the gaps.
"After Christmas," Ryou said softly, "I'll probably stop coming for a while."
When he got to his feet Seto made a concentrated effort not to look over. "Me too."
Not in deed, but in stillness, their routines were the same.
Ryou sat in his dark apartment and traced the words 'I didn't love him first' over and over against his palm. Seto went down to the river and took a piece of ice in his hands, image of white blonde curls behind his eyes when it started to thaw.