Thunder takes its fingers and digs them deep into the sleeping night and rends it apart in a primordial flash of bone white and bone shaking roar. It is this destruction of the heavens, and every dying cry it gives, that Ritsuka finds himself again lying awake and listening. The blankets are mussed and stovetop hot around him, kicked away in a ragged corona from the humidity. His chest falls rapid and shallow to the beat of thunder peals, as they seem to press down on him every time his mind drifts into sleeping colors. The summer heat is suffocating, and the noise is deafening.

For once, it would be nice not to have ears, to not have everything sounding in terrible double time. The thunder, for one, but also to forget the pitiful and unending mother-cries from Cho in the other room, still pining after his mother and the puppy-pile of his brothers and sisters. But how would Yayoi react should he stroll into class without them? Yuiko would not be able to hold her curious tongue, Ritsuka thought with a thin smile—she might not even understand what an absence of ears and a cute feline tail meant. And what shade of jealous pink would Shinonome-san turn?

When the speculation turns to a head of tarnished-gold hair in his memory, what would be his specific reaction, the thunder peal and the sound of footsteps falling into his room pull him sharply away from the pit of his stomach, now currently somewhere in his toes. He jolts from his misty, half-sleeping state and looks over his shoulder in the darkness. It's not hard to recognize the figure there as Soubi, of course, but what makes Ritsuka's brow furrow and his bottom lip jut is the cause.

"Soubi," he drawls, "it's too hot tonight. Go to sleep by yourself, okay?"

"Can I just stay in your room?"

Ritsuka pushes himself up onto his elbows and watches Soubi carefully, scanning him for hints of ulterior motive in the wispy bun of wheat-colored hair, and the low, tired lines beneath his bare eyes. He scowls wanly back. "Fine," he puffs in relapse, "but don't be touchy-feely, please. I can barely sleep as it is." He flops back onto the mattress.

"Yes," Soubi answers, moving forward like a ghost, as white as the sheen on his glasses in daylight, and walking as if he'd crumble to act too quickly. Ritsuka presses the side of his face into his pillow and watches the waistband of his striped pajama pants move into view, then watches Soubi sit silently on the floor beside his bed. The lightning flashes catch the delicate fly-aways of blond and turns bone white for a moment.

Ritsuka sighs through the following words of thunder, the glass blue of Soubi's eyes glowing from the remaining lightning flash. "You wanted to say 'Master,' again, didn't you?"

Soubi's smile is like bared bones, a little face pulled from a bag to try and placate Ritsuka as words he will not want to hear come from his mouth. "Yes," he admits. It's an ugly truth, and unattractive fact, but it's not a veil or an outright lie.

Ritsuka has been trying to decide if it's better, the lie or the uninviting truth. It's not more comfortable, that's for sure. His lips curl unhappily together for a moment and his eyes close.

"Ritsuka."

Of course, Soubi has other ways of reaching the heart of Ritsuka other than the alternately hollow and sometimes unbearably young glow of his eyes, eyes that were eternally blue and symmetrical, no matter the pain in them. There's a tenor to his voice that seems to pull every cord in him, tugging him like the sunray tugs the gasping flower. They vibrate, glow blue, in his imagination, and Ritsuka then imagines Soubi sitting at a harp with blue strings and tilting his head at it in confusion.

He can't play a chord to save his life, he's said once.

When he smiles mysteriously to himself, Soubi speaks again. "Ritsuka." He awaits the eye contact to say more, only echoing his pained, quiet plea. Ritsuka half-grimaces, his mind still curling around the inviting image, a blond head falling further to the side, glasses glinting, face puckering in curiosity. He wants to dream, is ready to dream—but Soubi's voice and the thunderclap finally draw him back to the flashing night.

"Yes, what?" he mutters.

Soubi doesn't answer, and Ritsuka sighs. He pops one, singular eye open and frowns. "What?"

Soubi glances down, then back at Ritsuka, trying to mask the color of shame in his eyes, so bare and faint, but deeply blue, when he says, "I…"

Maybe it's been the long, jarring night of shifting at each roar of thunder and kicking uncomfortably at the hot surfaces everywhere, even in his own body that makes Ritsuka almost scoff again, impatient at this drawn out, string-like way of talking. Humidity is not something to trifle with in his opinion, and Soubi is far too fickle on such a sweltering, sleepless night. "You what?" he groans, only half-wanting the answer. Sleep seems so far away, so distant, and reality is like breathing in molasses.

Hesitating for a moment to nervously clench his lips, Soubi asks, "Ritsuka… I want to lay in your bed."

And for once, it's not a request for a command, a way to indulge the perverse traps in his mind and body laid so long ago that torment him even now. It's not quenching the abusing need to be abused or used, to satisfy his nervousness with pain, but something little and pure. Of course, his truth may be pure, but that doesn't mean Ritsuka doesn't make a cautious face anyway, wondering if he intends to keep him even long kissing him and harassing him.

"I just want to sleep," Ritsuka specifies in a half-dour tone, but slides over on the mattress.

Soubi blinks, and for a moment, as lightning curls down to the earth in a death-burst of white, he can see the smile almost perfectly. Ritsuka sighs, but lets him crawl into the mussed sheets with no resistance. Soubi settles his head onto the pillow, facing his younger in silence, not touching him in the least.

And when no hand seeks shelter in his hair or no joyful goodnight kiss descends up on him, Ritsuka squints at him and clutches at the mattress in suspicion. Perhaps it's truly not Soubi in his bed. A stranger fooling him and waiting to strike. "What's wrong with you?"

Soubi smiles and sighs gently. He rubs his face into the pillow like a child nuzzles the fur of a new pet and Ritsuka watches his body loosen, abandon it's taut anxiety, and crumple comfortably into a sleeping position. All he does to touch Ritsuka is reach out and lazily loop a few, willowy fingers with his. Then his nearly sleeping again, his eyes settling shut, so small and delicate without the round frame of his glasses. "I was just afraid. But I'm alright now…" he murmurs. "Thanks."

Now the curiosity is welling again—that which makes him still remember the doodle, the way he cries and smokes alone some nights—and Ritsuka is perplexed again. He reaches up with his free hand and moves away the long, wheaten tresses that obscure his face. "It's fine…" he reassures him, brushing his hand down his cheek as he pulls away. "But what were you afraid of, Soubi? Did you have another nightmare?" He asks the latter with considerable more weight, stopping to squeeze his fingers.

But Soubi only sleeps and smiles, pushing one final response out before apparently welcoming dreams claim him. "I don't like storms…"

The splits of lightning and the responding laughter of electricity that was thunder now wanes, quietly walking off into the distance, but still occasionally lighting a corner of the room in blue-white. The humidity that had forewarned it also stalks quietly off, leaving the windows open to the soft, cool breezes that would accumulate into a chilly night in a little while. That means he'll soon be enveloped in Soubi, clinging for warmth in his sleep, but for now, Ritsuka only watches him.

"Weirdo," he mutters. "You could have just said so."

Ritsuka cannot help but eagerly turn his ears, both sets, pricked intently, when the storm-noise fades and he can hear the slow, low, loveable breath roll in and out of Soubi's half-parted lips. He blinks for a moment, surprised at the smallness of the sound—considering his battle-ready voice, all strength and confidence—then smiles and closes his eyes. So, the ears are somewhat useful yet.

He won't always hear Soubi in double-time. Best to enjoy it now, as the thunder fades.