In their cold haze, footstep over footstep to remember what keeps them walking, Shinjiro steps to their bedroom door. They rest their head against it, thoughts full of fog - the steel stitched into the beanie's front presses its frame into the wool, and they can feel its shape on their forehead. The pulse in their temples kick at every beat, vicious; a reminder.
Arisato's footsteps match it, until they don't, and Shinjiro is forced to turn their head and look at him, expecting some kind of stare.
He leans on the wall just next to the door's frame, and reaches forward to place his hand on the doorknob. There is warmth passed from his hand to Shinjiro's, cold and slick with sweat with tepid body heat like a night terror, or an unsteady pond. Shinjiro thinks they'd have to run their hand over warm stone, stovetops, a lighter, just to keep the same kind of heat. Their fingers clutch around the fake brass, and Minato looks at the differences between them. Skin colour, function, history.
He holds the door like an intruder, even with Shinjiro looking at him in the eye. When they're leaning against the door like this, the height difference between them feels a little bit more forgiving.
"You don't have to keep following me around," Shinjiro says. Minato doesn't respond. One of them turns the doorknob, Shinjiro swaying inside.
Their room is empty, spare clothing bought for them kept in one basket. A desk never used. Minato remembers Mitsuru and Yukari cleaning the room for Shinjiro before they moved back in, and the dust had returned as a much more thin layer across most surfaces inside. If he guessed Shinjiro was never in their room, they'd be right.
If either of them were other people - if they could shake with laughter and not stare at the corners of rooms - there'd be something to say about helping someone break into your own room.
"You looked upset," Minato breathes, his voice always low, stones over water. He tips his head when he glances upward, and Shinjiro doesn't give him a chance to get his hands under the cover they have locked over their worries.
"There's no need to get worried about me. It's health problems."
They try to cut their words rough and unfriendly on the curve of their tongue, but it never breaks Arisato's surface. Glass that never shatters, always held together, keeping himself bound with grit that ought to give. They can try for a couple of brash words to push him away, but Arisato is too sympathetic for his own good, because he knows . The way he looks at Shinjiro is like a nail in their heart.
"Aragaki." Arisato calls towards Akihiko and Mitsuru the same way, but he never sighs it like he does for Shinjiro. "I'll make you stay home if it's serious."
The laugh that comes isn't a normal laugh, a mockery of humanity and mimicking the split of a smile. Shinjiro was never normal, even before the sickness came. "Tough guy, aren't you?"
"Don't," he mutters, and it's a threat, and it's a warning, and it's the pull of losing your heart to someone all at once. Don't , he says again, but Shinjiro doesn't hear that kind of promise, especially not when Minato's resolve stays hardened and he doesn't let Shinjiro take their next step forward inside to break the tension between them. Tension that doesn't have a purpose. Tension to keep up the appearance they haven't broken parts for each other already.
Shinjiro looks inside their room.
"Still don't have to follow me around," they mutter. "I'm not big on socializing with that large of a group."
"What would you prefer?" he asks, and even though Minato Arisato isn't the gentle type, he relaxes his tone enough, like encouraging an animal out of hiding.
It's easier to be Shinjiro when you think of yourself like that.
"Don't know," Shinjiro tries. making up an excuse that withers like wind. " - Kind of like a one on one thing. Easier to talk about things. No one's eavesdropping."
Minato doesn't have to tell them he'll be the one. Shinjiro finally looks at him again, a hand held up and out of place before reaching toward, touching his shoulder. That warmth again - maybe he's just the type to feel like space heaters and dying suns.
"... You can… come in, if you want," they try, and Minato's smile is a short one, and that's the kind of smile that gets to Shinjiro.
"It's late, isn't it?"
"You really think I'm sleeping anytime soon? I already know you were planning this from the start."
"I guess you caught me."
"I guess I did."
The door closes quietly. Minato makes the darkness a little more easier. It stays, Shinjiro's hand dragging over the wall switch before dropping it, taking place on the edge of their bed. They feel Minato's weight sink next to them, and his hand rests between their knee and his own.
Shinjiro's long fingers link between his. He's patient. It feels good.