N knows that all the mathematical formulas and equations in the world, all the sense and reason, logic and knowledge cannot calm a frantic mind.
He is not like others; has never been, but Touya says it's okay. It's okay, because as long as one person sees him beyond the creature clothed in human skin, panting and clawing at the world to find meaning, then there is a point to all this.
To everything.
It's worth the sleepless nights and the ponderings and the what-if's that trail behind him, cloaking him and choking him like a shroud.
He whispers to himself before he sleeps in the grass of an overgrown field, eyes high and searching starry skies, "I am alive."
He is alive. He is the way he is, exists the way he does, because he chooses to do so. No matter what anyone says, dehumanizes him as, he will always, always be alive, as long as he chooses to do so.
But Touya. Touya falls away to another place in the realm of human comprehension. He is everything and nothing, a shadow that smiles at him and is all at once dangerous to others, kind to others.
Sometimes he wonders if Touya is real; to have someone so perfect by his side seems like a dream.
But every day he is reminded of Touya's faults, like getting lost; or burning water (as impossible as it seems); or waking up moody and sulking the morning away, until eventually Samurott snorts and lifts him by his hood and carries him to a private place, telling secrets and stories into his boy's tousled hair until he smiles.
Touya is real and human, even as his figure in the dark is still.
He makes no whispers or sighs, and does not wake when N screams from his nightmares, and in a way, that is all that N wants. It is important that Touya doesn't see the monster sniffling in the dark, clenching battered sleeping bag to chest and pleading why why why.
But when Touya does stir, the movements filtering into N's feverishly dreaming mind, there is a sense of wrong in his heart (this shouldn't be why him why please forgive me), and his eyes snap open and he is up and holding and shushing before he even quite registers that this is real.
Touya is real.
He shakes and shudders and thrashes in his arms, screaming and pleading, and when at last N grasps his shoulders, then slowly slides to cup his cheeks, hot and tear-stained, he gulps for air. His hands flutter around his neck, remembering a vice-like grip, steel fingers pressing and pressing and pressing—
"Am I alive?" he gasps. "Am I still here?"
There are words for moments like these. I'm sorry. It's okay. He isn't here. Please keep breathing. It's only a nightmare, it isn't real but you are—
Please forgive me.
But N does not say them; Touya gasps and pleads and does not see him.