Yuuri didn't notice anything different the morning the fog rolled in. He woke up in bed with his fiancé, Wolfram somewhat splayed over him with his obnoxious sleeping habits, and felt exactly the same as the morning before. He bathed himself while Wolfram gathered another hour of beauty sleep then spent his time between getting dressed and attending the morning meal with the usual banter and friendly jests. Wolfram seemed the same as well, just as cranky and irritable as ever. What was Gunter so afraid of, he couldn't help but wonder. This truth-fog was seriously a piece of cake.

At least, that was what he thought before breakfast. During breakfast was something of another story entirely.

"I couldn't sleep a wink last night. I was so worried about the fog that I couldn't manage anything past three rounds of masturbation while thinking only of our beloved king."

"How energetic of you, Gunter!" Celi replied, apparently the only person at the table immune to the shock of hearing such confessions spoken so boldly.

Yuuri's face was nothing less than two shades beneath scarlet as he sat in a stupor, his spork halfway to his lips and then forgotten as his eyes focused on nothing in particular.

Nope. No big deal. Just a little bit of truth fog. Everything was just fine; no body was saying weird things.

Right?

"Thinking of Yuuri!?" Wolfram shouted, standing and slamming his hands to the table.

Conrad gripped his younger brother's shoulder to calm him, the immovable object to the third son's unstoppable force. "Wolfram, today is a day when we must be our most forgiving," he reminded him, his own cheeks just as red as Yuuri's in second-hand embarrassment.

Gunter hid his face behind a napkin and the drape of his long bangs. "My apologies," he mutter weakly.

It was instantly less funny to see how mortified Gunter looked. Yuuri cleared his throat and the contents of his spork. Perhaps, for now, it was best not to say anything.

"Oh, Wolf, don't be mean. I'm sure everyone here has touched themselves while thinking of His Majesty Yuuri. It's not so strange!"

"Mother!"

Oh, look, the egg was fried perfectly. That's nice. Nice, runny yoke. Just the way he liked it. Yum.

"I even hear there's a small market for black toys said to be the perfect likeness of His Majesties little king."

"Mother, I think perhaps the less said, the better," Conrad advised, all but sweating as he forced Wolfram to sit back in his chair.

Celi frowned. "You're no fun. How will we share our deepest secrets and hidden passions if we don't talk?"

"That's not... really what we're trying to do," Yuuri muttered, his eyes averted to his plate and no longer willing to wander.

Gwendal grunted in agreement, as stoic as ever but almost sickeningly pale as he did his best to ignore everything but his own meal before him.

So this was what everyone was so worried about. Okay, Yuuri understood now. Honestly, though, it hadn't occurred to him that they would find themselves pressed to admit to those kinds of things. They didn't exactly come up in normal conversation. It was just a matter of Gunter making the mistake of mentioning what he'd done the night before. Yuuri, at least, was lucky in that the most embarrassing thing he could possibly admit to was that it'd taken three passes to satisfactorily wipe his ass that morning after a rather messy bout of defecation. As long as he didn't mention anything about his morning or anything bathroom related, it probably wouldn't come up. And even if it did, it wouldn't be the worse thing to have happen. Certainly better than announcing how many times and about whom he thought of during private, sensitive times. Poor Gunter. How mortifying. They were definitely going to instigate the never-speaking-of-this-again plan.

It was nothing but the sounds of cutlery on plates for the rest of their meal, most people excusing themselves immediately and running to hide as the magnitude of the potential terror they faced remained a permanent fixture in their minds. No one wanted to be the next Gunter. Such a dishonor would be almost worse than death. Only Conrad and Wolfram refrained for fleeing, staying instead by Yuuri's side as though the day were much the same as all the others.

"Well, the less said the better," Yuuri advised, trying to honor his tutor in at the very least not speaking of him in his absence.

Wolfram nodded, though his annoyance still pinched along his brows. Conrad smiled slightly and let Yuuri lead the way.

Out in the gardens the fog was nothing short of beautiful. It was of a shifting color that was simultaneously green and lilac with hints of amber in the swirl of its arms. It hugged the flowers with a persistent dew and smelled heavily of rocks and earth.

"What do you think made it, Conrad?" he asked, leaning against one of the walkway pillars to gaze out on the open square that offered an opaque veil between them and the other side.

Conrad paused, looking at the innocuous haze with complete seriousness. "I don't know. Perhaps it is made of souls or wishes-an unrealized dream that has since become aware but not able to understand the consequences of its design."

Yuuri nodded. That sounded nice. "I think I like to think of it as good intentioned-not something cruel. Honesty itself isn't a bad thing."

"No. But the ability to lie-or to filter through the truth-is important in our lives. Not everything we think or feel deserves to be shared."

Wolfram breathed a long sigh, leaning opposite Yuuri, and let his head fall back to the stone. "This is going to be a long day," he said. And it was true-of course it was true-as far as any of them could tell. But it was still just one day. They'd been through far worse. The Originators, with all their evil, had fallen in much the same amount of time. This was nothing compared to that.

"I suppose with visibility like this, catch is out of the question. So is riding, training, anything outdoors, really," Yuuri remarked, aiming to think of something they could do while they waited for time to pass.

Conrad smiled gently. "It's no worse than a rainy day. I'm sure you and Wolfram will find some minor bout of trouble to get into. You always do."

"And you always come rescue us," Yuuri added with his own wide smile. He was right. Outside the minor fiasco at breakfast, it was surly going to be a simple matter of staving off boredom more than anything. He and Wolfram were nearly pros at that.

"I could paint your portrait."

"Never again," Yuuri swore, thinking only of the stench. Wolfram's lack of skill certainly factored in as well.

"You could try your hand at painting mine."

Yuuri could only imagine the mess he'd make of that and chuckled lightly at the thought. "My skill wouldn't do a handsome guy like you justice," he said out loud, somewhat surprising himself with the words. He'd meant to say 'you'd only make fun of me' but his tongue and lips had built a different sentence entirely.

So that was what it was like. Yuuri found himself rather relieved. He'd been concerned the fog would cause some sort of compulsion to just say the first thing that came to mind but instead it seemed to be very fair in its application. The words it made him say were far more honest than the ones he'd chosen. He wasn't afraid of Wolfram laughing at him-the mazoku was always mocking him. His real fear was in not being good at it; in trying to impress him and failing spectacularly. That was okay. He was okay with having said that.

What a gracious fog indeed.

"It would be interesting to see what your heart put on the canvas."

"My heart?" Yuuri echoed.

Wolfram hummed in affirmation. "You have to learn from masters to be able to paint what the eyes see but it's instinctual to paint what is in your heart. Even if it's just a big splash of a single color, if you paint with your heart, then your feelings will come through."

Yuuri frowned thoughtfully. "So which do you paint from?"

"My heart, of course. I love you."

"That's terrifying," Yuuri admitted. It only took an instant to realize the words which came through. He stammered, eyes wide with shame on his cheeks as he did his best to recover from that rather insensitive remark. "I mean, uh, I don't love you," he said, trying again, and finding the words just as callous. What was this?! "I-I mean, I... a lot of the time I do everything I can to get away from you because you're like this massive, suffocating force of nature." What was happening?!

Yuuri placed his hands over his mouth and he moved away, staring at Wolfram with eyes blown wide. Wolfram stared back, his mouth pulled thin and green eyes void of all expression.

"Oh, shit, I-I-I mean; I mean I don't mean-I... I really want to not say anything else."

Wolfram's voice was low, hesitant and soft. "Right."

"I'm sorry..." Yuuri took several steps back, his knees shaking slightly as his hands visibly trembled at his face. "I should have been more insistent about my prejudices and expectations from the start but I didn't want to risk losing the perks of our current relationship-I mean I never thought about your feelings at all! I mean-I...!"

It only got worse. Every time he opened his mouth it only got worse and now every sentence ended with a wince like a heavy-handed blow to his fiancé's face. Yuuri found feeling in his legs only to put that strength into a full out run, not caring where they took him so long as it was far away from there.

"Yuuri!" Conrad called out, and Yuuri wanted nothing more than for his retainer to stay away, to make sure Wolfram was alright, to treat his heartlessness as the evil it was and abandon him this once to tend to someone more worthy of his attention.

How could he say those things to his friend? How could he so ruthlessly tear into him even when he could see the pain in his eyes? And the fact that it was all true, that every word was real, made every step he took in haste one step too few to truly escape.