Monday homecomings were usually a little bleak for Yukito, but today he was actually looking forward to coming home to an empty house. The apartment loomed out before him big and dark and comfortably when he pushed open the door, and he smiled as a click of the light switch brought the indistinct shapes and lumbering shadows into familiar, sharp relief.

The first order of business, as always, was dinner. Dinner, technically, was the responsibility of whoever got home first, but in practicality this meant that Yukito was almost always cooking. Except for Mondays, Touya was always home to join Yukito for dinner – but on Mondays, Touya's residency hours spanned the entire evening until nine o'clock, and Yukito often had trouble filling the blank, empty hours between the time that he came home and the time that Touya stepped through the door.

After the cold politeness and stiff formality that had characterized their Sunday together, however, Yukito was happy to have their home to himself for a while.

He had brought some work home with him, and found himself absent-mindedly perusing the documents as he ate, wielding his chopsticks with uncharacteristic care so as not to splatter food on the reports. Once the dishes were done and the leftovers had been carefully tucked away into the fridge Yukito relocated into the living room, curling himself into his favorite armchair and laying out the pages of essays that needed correction on the over-sized arms.

When Touya finally did get home, the relaxing effects of productivity and a large dinner had worked their magic. Yukito was pulled out of his work by the soft grinding of the key turning in the lock, and began clearing up his work with true cheerful anticipation, even in spite of the tense atmosphere that had hung thick between him and his love for the past four days.

Out of habit, Touya went to the kitchen as soon as he had pulled off his jacket and replaced his shoes for slippers. Monday evenings, that was usually where Yukito was to be found, reading a book or completing some chore, patiently waiting for Touya to come home.

"I'm in here," Yukito called. He was still trying to reorganize the pages of his report into some coherent order when Touya poked his head in the room. Yukito glanced at the clock as he tapped the report smartly on the coffee table and slipped it back into his briefcase.

"You're home later than usual," he remarked, doing a passably good job of hiding his wince of pain as he rose to his feet. "Was everything all right at work?"

Touya's face was tense and hooded with anxiety – he clearly had been worrying about this moment all day – but was beginning to clear in the face of the sheer domestic normalcy of the scene.

"No, everything went fine," he said softly, following Yukito into the kitchen, raising his voice a little over the clatter as Yukito began to heat his dinner. "I just stopped at the drug store on the way home to pick up a few things. What were you working on?"

Yukito was surprised by Touya's interest. Normally, he seemed to ignore his work all together – Yukito rather thought that Touya viewed it as a dull and eccentric hobby. Yukito put his uncharacteristic curiosity down to never having seen Yukito take work home before.

"Oh, it was just some reports for the Yasayu-" he stopped suddenly, mouth still open, hand still on the cabinet where they kept the plates, brow furrowing into a deep, thoughtful frown. Did Touya even know what the Yasayuga Project was? Yukito took a moment to carefully replay the past year's worth of memories, and nearly whistled in shock. Not once, in all that time, had he even thought to mention it.

He shouldn't have been surprised, really. When they were together, Touya and Yuki either talked about Touya's residency or Yukito's magical work for Sakura. Yukito had always fostered Touya's disinterest in his work, since they certainly didn't depend on his salary for their livelihood, and because so much of Yukito's work probably wouldn't qualify under Touya's definition of 'totally safe.'

Yukito's mind began to whirl as for the first time in six years the depth of this lack of communication dawned on him – and the way that he was currently feeling, he was immediately convinced that his reticence, which of course he viewed as solely his fault, had permanently impaired their relationship. In an instant the cheerful comfort had gone, and he was back to feeling pathetic, worthless, and hugely guilty.

It took him a moment to realize that Touya was on his feet, and another moment to recognize that Touya had mistaken his slack-jawed shock for a sudden summons from Sakura. He pulled himself together as best as he could, and reassured Touya that nothing was wrong, that his sister was fine. It didn't occur to him to reassure him that he was fine as well. Finally, once the microwave had beeped and the familiar motions of dishing the food out onto a plate had forced him back into normality, he resumed speaking. His voice still sounded slightly horrified, like it was coming from a long way off.

"The Yasayuga Project is the name that we've given our research report on elder abuse. So much of elder care in Japan is done within the family that there isn't a lot of infrastructure to determine if seniors are being mistreated, but our research is showing that it happens a lot more frequently than people would like to think. Families just aren't built the way that they used to be," Yukito explained, allowing himself to fall back on the warm, familiar speech patterns of explanation. "These days, it's not uncommon for every adult in a household to work, and for their children to spend nearly the full workday at school. There's no one around to take care of the grandparents, and they suffer from neglect.

"I was just going over some of the interviews that Yasuo – my coworker," Yukito rushed to fill in, seeing the blank look in Touya's eye. Sun, moon and stars, he swore silently when he saw that even his co-workers' names failed to ring a bell in Touya's memory. What have we talked about for the last six years? "Did last week with some nurses in the Alzheimer's unit of a local hospital – your hospital, actually."

"I've never seen you bring home work before," Touya mumbled between bites. Yukito felt his face go stony as he listened carefully for the note of accusation or suspicion that he was sure had been hidden somewhere in the comment. Unable to find it, he answered guardedly.

"I'm going to be working a lot the next few weeks," Yukito picked his way gingerly through the words, pointedly not mentioning that he had a day and a half's worth of work to make up for because of the time he had missed. "The Foundation wants to axe the funding on the project."

Touya blinked, and Yukito was surprised to see that Touya looked truly indignant. "What?" he asked, a frown playing with his brow and lips. "Why? It seems like a wonderful project!"

Somewhere deep and dark and still and cold, somewhere that not even Yueh was allowed to go, echoed oddly at the words. Yukito noticed it only vaguely, and failed to give it even a second thought.

"Politics," Yukito answered simply, pulling at his lower lip with his right hand. Usually by this time Yukito needed a second dinner, but he hadn't quite had his normal appetite over the past four days. He was having a hard time working out what to do with his hands while he watched someone else eat. "Literally. Rumor has it that the Foundation president is trying for a Diet seat next November, and he thinks that broadcasting a problem like elder abuse will only estrange voters who don't like to think that traditional family values are going out of style. Or something." Yukito sighed, and began fiddling with his glasses. "We've already been taken off all of our research that has to do with organized crime. That was a big blow, because the work that we were doing with the Kabuki-cho prostitutes could have been really beneficial. But organized crime is another 'politically charged topic,'" Yukito formed the words with distaste. He was sweating now, and his hands were fumbling and shaking as he played with his wire frames, because this was getting dangerously close to the topic of gangs, which was dangerously close to the topic of Soichiro – but luckily Touya didn't press him to say anymore. Instead he just shook his head.

"That's terrible," he said sympathetically, simple sincerity ringing in his voice like a bell. He even seemed to have forgotten that awful, tense nervousness he had been adopting around Yukito for the past few days.

"I know," Yukito mused, once again vaguely noticing a strange echoing vibration reaching the back of his mind from somewhere in the depths of his soul. "But that's life. Men with a lot of money usually aren't content to use it all on charitable works."

"I had no idea that that was the kind of research that you were doing, either," Touya continued. Once again, Yukito listened bleakly for any kind of reproach in his lover's voice, and once again couldn't find any. "I bet it's fascinating," he continued, as he stood and began moving his dishes to the sink.

"Oh, no, I'll get the dishes," Yukito said hurriedly, happily clinging to the banks of familiarity at last. Squabbling over who did the dishes was a daily part of life in their household. "You need to go to bed, it's almost ten thirty. They really shouldn't schedule your Monday and Tuesday shifts only twelve hours apart," Yukito clucked, fussing around near the sink to see if Touya would give him an opening. To his total surprise, he did.

"All right," Touya said briskly, pushing the plates into Yukito's surprised hands. "I'll go get the bandages ready. I need to see to your injuries tonight. I should have done it yesterday. It was stupid of me not to," his voice was self-critical, but he didn't need to add that they had both been too busy being polite at each other to actually get much of anything done, "but I picked up some astringent at the drug store on the way home, so maybe it's all for the best. Meet me in the bedroom when you're done with that."

Yukito had meant to protest, to say that he would be fine ministrating to his wounds on his own and to remind him that he needed to be up in just a few hours, but Touya's brisk, efficient attitude had totally disarmed him. He washed the dishes meekly and set them in the dish drainer, before padding into the bedroom.

Touya had set up his side of the bed just like a doctor's work table, with all the first aid equipment that they owned neatly laid out across the bedspread.

"Lay down," Touya said in that tone of voice of his which wasn't precisely an order, but that Yukito had never worked up the courage to test. "Take off your shirt, too, please."

Yukito was lying face down with his back exposed before he even realized that he had moved. He heard the soft rustling of the bedspread as Touya picked up and rearranged some of his medical supplies, and then ambled over to Yukito's side of the bed.

"Mph," he grunted as he looked thoughtfully down on Yukito's still form. "This would be a lot easier if the bed were higher."

There was a soft splatting sound as Touya squirted something into his hands.

"What are you doing?" Yukito asked quietly. The smell and feel of the bed that he'd banished himself from for the past half week was having a soothing, relaxing effect. He allowed his eyelids to flutter closed and just listened to the counterpoint made by both of their breathing.

"I'm going to put an astringent on your bruises," Touya murmured in that dark, soft, comforting voice of his.

"Which astringent?" Yukito's voice was distinctly sleepy now.

"It's marketed as an acacia product."

"I'd bet you 1000 yen that the active ingredient is alcohol."

He felt Touya look at the label on the bottle. "Well, what do you know," he said, his voice heavy with amusement, as he brought his hands down on Yukito's back. "I've told you this before, you would have made a much better doctor than me."

Touya had to lean uncomfortably down and sideways to be able to get a good angle at Yukito's back, and Yuki's psyche twinged in sympathetic discomfort, reviving him a little.

"I was built to be a good doctor," he said bitterly, shifting his weight to give his head more freedom of movement and to give Touya a better angle. "At least now I know that what I'm doing, I'm doing on my own."

Touya didn't say anything. He just continued to massage Yukito's back in large, competent strokes. After a moment Yukito felt Touya brace a knee against the side of the bed to steady himself as he bent over Yukito's still form. It seemed to help, but Touya was still struggling to swathe both sides of Yukito's back equally. Finally, Yuki heard Touya mutter something like, "Oh, to hell with it," and the bed shifted under a new weight. The pressure on his back trembled for a moment and evened out.

"Sorry," Touya murmured from somewhere directly above him, and Yukito realized that Touya was kneeling with one leg on either side of him on the bed. "I'll try not to sit on you."

The close proximity, strangely, was making him blush in a way that Touya hadn't made him blush in years. The soft, caressing motion of Touya's hands was causing his heart to beat too fast and his stomach to feel far too light.

Touya didn't realize that he was crying for nearly another five minutes. Yukito kept his face resolutely hidden from view, and by sheer brute force of will kept his breathing steady, deep and even. Eventually, though, he couldn't stop the sobs from breaking through, and he felt Touya's hands still as his shoulders began to heave and shudder under their force.

"Yukito?" Touya asked, and his full name sounded strange on Touya's voice. "What's wrong? Am I hurting you?"

"No," Yuki managed to gasp. Strangely, even he didn't know what had made him begin weeping, although now the knowledge that Touya thought he was crying for Soichiro was enough to keep him going. "Sorry," he whispered. "I apologize for my weakness." They both knew that he wasn't just talking about his tears, and Touya jerked his hands away as if Yuki's skin had burned him.

"Please," he mumbled, voice muffled from keeping his face hidden. "Don't stop? It… it feels good."

There was a moment of hesitation, but then Touya replaced his hands. He still massaged Yuki's skin in soft, careful circles, but the intimacy had gone, and Touya seemed as impersonal and removed as any doctor.

Immediately after Touya was done rubbing as much astringent into Yukito's tired skin as it would take, and had finished bathing and bandaging the cuts on his thigh and forearms, Yukito forced his leaden limbs to take his weight and he made to leave the room to Touya for the night. Touya stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Wait," his voice came out almost too deep to hear. "You need your sleep as much as I do. We should both sleep in here for the night." Yukito turned and peered sharply into Touya's eyes. The words had been resigned, but his voice had been hopeful – even inviting.

Yukito nodded his agreement and crawled into bed without as much as a word. He said a silent prayer just before he dropped to sleep that their relationship would mend enough that he'd no longer have to guess the meaning behind his lover's words.

…

Yukito left work the next day for Dr. Kobayashi's office in a state of real regret. Not only was he unenthusiastically anticipating the coming meeting, but he had had to leave in the middle of a promising row between Yasuo and Aiko. The last of their disagreements had left a hole in the back wall of the conference room from where Aiko had thrown the fax machine at her husband – unfortunately, the fax machine had been totally unharmed.

And everyone remembered the fateful day, nearly a full year ago now, when a dramatic argument that had been happening privately in Yasuo's office had turned into a banging, thumping, clattering mess of noise. Of course it had been innocent little Yuri, too naïve to think of such things, who had rushed in to make sure that they were all right and found them indisposed behind the desk. No matter how it ended, days where Yasuo and Aiko were fighting were interesting for everyone.

Yuki had his route timed almost perfectly – mostly in an effort to miss as little work as possible, partly in the vain hope that he would be held up by traffic – and didn't even have a chance to sit down in the awkward waiting room before his name was called and he was ushered into Dr. Kobayashi's office.

Once again he was motioned into a comfortable armchair across from the slightly more practical seat that the doctor sank into. There was a moment's awkward silence – what am I supposed to say? Yukito wondered nervously, brain whirling into overdrive in his discomfort. Hello? How are you? I'm feeling very sane today?

Luckily, it was the doctor who broke the silence first. "I'm very pleased to see you again," she said, and she smiled like she meant it.

Yukito felt like a bucket of uncomfortably warm water had been dumped up his body, starting at his abdomen and trickling insidiously up to his flaming ears. Her innocent words had brought back his mortifying lack of self-control the day before, and he felt the overwhelming urge to just sink into the floor in an embarrassed little puddle of goo.

Pulling himself back together, he said, "Thank you very much."

She gave him another, genuine, peaceful little smile. "Now, Tsukishiro-san, I do very much want to find out more about your family and your relationship with Kinomoto-san, but first I wanted to ask you: what did you think about relating your experiences of the past few weeks to me and to Kinomoto-san?"

Yukito blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?" he finally asked.

"How did it make you feel?" she clarified. "Was it harder to say in front of me or in front of him? What were your thoughts about it?"

"Um." Yukito said. The only emotions he had ever been any good at vocalizing were ones of love and happiness. His self-expression of pain or embarrassment was usually stilted, stumbling, and nearly unintelligible. "I guess… it was embarrassing?" He looked to Dr. Kobayashi to see if that was the right thing to say, but she maintained an expression of quizzical attentiveness.

"I mean, that's not the type of thing that anyone wants their lover to hear," he continued. "And I guess I was scared that Touya would get angry when he heard it," Yukito hazarded. "Right?"

Dr. Kobayashi was looking politely puzzled. "You were scared that Touya would get angry," she prompted him to continue.

"Er, right," Yukito said. "I guess… I mean, when someone makes a fool out of you, you don't want it to be brought up over and over again. I guess I felt like I was rubbing his nose in it a little. I felt like I'd rather just forget the whole thing."

"I see. And if Touya cheated on you, would you want to forget the whole thing?"

Yukito allowed his bright eyes to go dim for a moment as he focused his attention inward. "Well… I guess not," he finally said. "I'd want to know every single little detail, I guess. Up to and including bedroom positions. But… Touya isn't like that," Yukito said it slowly, as if he were puzzling over a problem.

"He's not?" Dr. Kobayashi asked kindly.

"Well… I guess I can't tell you what he'd want," Yukito still seemed to be looking inward. "I can only tell you what he'd do. He's not nosy, like me. He doesn't press people to say more or needle at them to continue, like I do." He stopped and turned his eyes back to the doctor, smiling a little sadly. "That's not to say that I don't give people their space, or I don't know when to quit, or I can't be patient. I can be very, very patient. But... eventually, I will get you to tell me what I want to know. Touya, he finds things out for himself. He disregards the details. He assumes that anything he doesn't know already and you don't tell him can't be important. So, no. I don't think he wants to know every little detail, like I would."

"What do you think makes him different?" she asked. The tone of voice she was using, carefully detached but with a sizzle of purpose underneath, reminded him of some of his old professors. In fact, it reminded him of his own voice every time he did an interview.

"We-ell," Yukito's mind began whirling on overdrive again as he wondered how much of the truth he dared tell to a woman so firmly rooted in reality. "Touya's kind of perpetually caught in big brother mode. His little sister is seven years younger than him, and after their mom died, he became just like another guardian to her. And, you know, a growing girl, she isn't always going to want to be truthful with him. So he learned other ways to watch out for her. Quiet ways to find out what was going on in her head and in her life. And that shaped the way he is."

Yukito was actually quite proud of his answer. He hadn't technically lied about anything – he hadn't even bent the truth. He just hadn't mentioned Touya's long gone second sight, or Sakura's larger-than-normal arsenal of illusion-making.

Dr. Kobayashi nodded understandingly, and the next words out of her mouth halted Yukito's self congratulations.

"And what about you?" she asked. "What makes you always want to dig deeper?"

Here it comes, Yukito thought miserably, as explanations of Clow's treachery and death, his imaginary grandparents, and his long-unknown alternate form floated through his mind. He tried to make it look as if his panic were simply perfectly normal thoughtfulness. As if there was anything about this situation that was normal.

"I… uh." Yuki found himself filling in a silent snide comment about what a good start that had been. "Well – I guess – Oh, my. Well, I guess it could be because my grandparents… died. While they were traveling in Ireland." That didn't sound too bad, he thought, listening to the words.

"I lived with my grandparents almost all of my life, and as soon as I was old enough to be by myself they started spending most of their time traveling. It had always been their dream to see the world together, and I was very happy that they were still so much in love, and that they trusted me enough to give me the kind of freedom that most teenage boys only dream about." Yukito was hitting his stride now. Even this was a sort of truth, if a very twisty variety, and it wasn't too hard to remember what he used to tell himself those sleepless nights of high school, when he used to lie awake worrying over why he didn't seem to miss his grandparents.

"They both died of lung cancer while they were abroad. I was told that they died at nearly the same time, holding hands and smiling. I shouldn't have been surprised, since they were both lifetime smokers, but I hadn't even known that they were sick. They hadn't mentioned a word to me their last time home. So… so I guess now I always assume that there's more to a story than what I can see. And I assume that the part that I can't see is the important part."

Dr. Kobayashi was looking startled and sad, like she was truly feeling for the poor disillusioned boy in Yukito's tale, which made his conscience twinge. He had told her the legitimate version of his grandparent's deaths, the version that had gone in the obituaries and that he had told the school psychologist, but that didn't change the fact that it was just a figment that she was feeling sorry for.

"How often were your grandparents away?" she asked gently, as if she were giving him the option of refusing to say if he chose.

"None of their trips were shorter than a month, and they were never home for longer than a week, starting when I entered High School," Yukito lied boldly.

"Did you ever feel hurt when they left you alone for that long?" That was a question with only one answer. But Yukito's internal navigator was beginning to get used to picking out the coiling stacks of smoke and illusion that would be truth to this woman.

"I did, at first," he said carefully. "But I'm ashamed to say that after we moved to Tomoeda – the first week that we moved there, if not the first day - I began to forget about them."

"Why was that?" she asked expectantly.

"Because I met Kinomoto Touya." This part, Yukito didn't have to fake. He didn't need to force his eagle's eyes to get soft and honey-sweet at the name of his lover, because they did it on their own. His voice lit up, and his features softened, and he was disproportionately pleased that this part of the story would be the same in any reality.

"It wasn't love at first sight, but you might be tempted to call it that if you hadn't experienced it. I stood up in front of the class my first day of school, feeling small and timid and backwards and effeminate and utterly abandoned, and I looked at this sea of arrogant masks… and saw one real face. Just one. There was this one dark, awkwardly tall kid near the middle of the room who was just gaping at me. Well, he was doing a really good job of hiding it, actually," Yukito's conscience urged him to put in. "But he was still looking at me like I was something magnificent. Like he had never seen anything quite like me.

"So when it turned out that he was the class academic representative, and he was going to be the one helping me catch up on my lessons… to me, it felt like fate. He invited me over for dinner that very first night, and when I went home at the end of the evening… my heart stayed. It stayed in that house, protected by the fo- sorry, three people I love best in all the world. It stayed there until Touya had the courage to pick it up and keep it with him, always."

There was silence for a moment, as Dr. Kobayashi seemed to sift through this information.

"Then I take it I can trust your survey answer that said you had an extremely high interest in mending your relationship with Kinomoto-san."

With a twist of feeling that felt like a crash, Yukito remembered where he was, and who he was talking to, and why. His happy memories exploded, blown outward in a shattering, glittering arc of pure guilt. He was left breathing heavily, eyes thrown wide but not seeing anything, hands clenched tightly around the arms of his chair without feeling them. And he was small. And timid. And effeminate and backwards and all the rest, except this time, he was the one who had done the abandoning.

"Yes," he croaked, his voice bone dry. "You can."

…

The formalities, for Touya's visit to the therapist, took much longer than they had for Yuki's visit. Since the appointment was at her house, doorbells had to be rung, pets had to be shooed, coats had to be taken, and tea had to be offered before they could get down to business. But once they had, Dr. Kobayashi began the appointment in almost exactly the same way as she had for Yukito.

"Thank you so much for joining me, Kinomoto-san," she said, to break the inevitable tense silence. "Later in the hour I'd like to ask you a little bit about your family and your childhood, but for now I'm going to start by asking how you felt when Tsukishiro-san was telling us about the events of the past few months."

This question was significantly easier for Touya to answer than it had been for Yukito.

"I felt terrible," his reply was immediate. "I hadn't even known the half of what was going on. I just can't believe that Yukito would lie to me like that." Touya's voice was dark and heavy with intensity.

Dr. Kobayashi seemed honestly surprised by his answer. "Had you not spoken of it before?" She asked, allowing the shock to show.

"No," Touya said, resting his forehead in his hands. "Well, not really. Not in any detail, at least," his conscience made him add. "I knew that Yukito had been seeing him for over a year, and that their relationship had been romantic for about half of that. But I didn't know how frequently they had been seeing each other, or that he'd been spending so much money on him. I just… I just don't know what I'm supposed to think." Touya's voice trailed off bleakly.

"So you felt betrayed?" The doctor prompted him gently, after an appropriate-length moment of pause. Touya nodded slightly, as if agreeing too enthusiastically would make the pain more real.

"Yeah. Betrayed, deceived, taken in, whatever you want to call it. I trusted him. I thought our relationship was as close to perfect as you can get. He's the love of my life - I can never imagine loving anyone in the same way that I love him, even now. And he found someone that he thought was worth breaking my trust over, and he didn't even tell me. He didn't tell me about Soichiro, he didn't tell me about the gang, he didn't tell me about the blood price. I had to find out by invading his privacy, and I can't even feel guilty about it, because if I hadn't, he would have died."

"You were surprised, then, when you barged in on him?" Dr. Kobayashi asked, very tenderly.

"I guess so," Touya assented quietly. Dr. Kobayashi raised her eyebrows.

"You guess so?" she repeated.

"I mean… yeah, I was surprised. It's totally uncharacteristic for him to lie. He judges himself on a more rigid set of standards than he does anyone else, so lying or cheating or anything like that is… surprising. But… when I found out, it… well, it made sense. It was like all the little things that had been out of place for the past year just slipped into focus. His agitation, his impatience, his constant, chronic worrying – it just made everything make sense."

"So you had noticed him acting differently," Dr. Kobayashi said, as if it were important.

"If you had asked me that two weeks ago, I probably would have said no. I probably would have said Yuki was just tired, or stressed about something, or preoccupied. Everything that I noticed that was wrong could have had a perfectly normal explanation. But I was just fooling myself. Now I know that everything that seemed a little off was just because whenever he was with me he was wishing he could be with him."

"And why do you say that?" Touya was too preoccupied with his emotional agony to notice the edge on her voice as she asked the question, and treated it simply like all her other promptings.

"Ever since we were teenagers, I've felt like I couldn't really understand him," Touya muttered quietly, as if he were speaking from deep out of himself. "I mean, I could understand him better than most people could, because my mom died when I was a kid, but even that was nothing compared to what he'd been through. He was neglected, abandoned, orphaned," Touya called out the list bleakly, without letting himself dwell too long on any word. It was even the truth, as long as she didn't ask who it was that had abandoned him. "And when it became too much for him to bear, all I could do was hold him. I couldn't tell him I understood, or that I knew how he felt. I couldn't even tell him that it would all be all right, because I didn't know. And I always knew that Yukito suffered because I couldn't really reassure him.

"But Soichiro… the little I know about him, I know that his childhood was… similar to Yukito's. So much so that it can't possibly be a coincidence. And once I found that out, it just made sense that Yukito had gone off and found someone that he could really relate to."

Dr. Kobayashi debated whether or not she should nudge her patient in the right direction by reminding him that his lover's preoccupation could have just as easily been the a sign of a guilty conscience as it could have been a sign of dissatisfaction, but the hooded, uncompromising look in Kinomoto-san's eyes eventually decided her to change the subject.

"So, tell me a little bit about your childhood, Kinomoto-san," she said after she felt she had allowed enough time to elapse. Touya looked at her sharply.

"You're not going to psychoanalyze me, are you?" his voice was bland.

"I see you've read Freud," was the doctor's dry reply. "No, I don't psychoanalyze. However, it is true that our experiences as children help to shape who we are as adults. It is also true that telling me about your childhood is the easiest way for me to learn the names of your family members."

Touya's face barely changed, but Dr. Kobayashi felt him relax.

"I guess the most important thing for you to know about my childhood is that my mother died of leukemia when I was nine. My dad had enough on his plate, grieving for my mom and working to support a family, so I decided to do as much as I could to take care of my little sister on my own. Sakura," he added, and Dr. Kobayashi was interested to notice that his face changed just by saying the name.

"I became really over-protective of her. She had always been extremely precious to me, but she became… the only thing I had left. Something to be protected, and loved, and cherished, both to remind myself that my mom was still there, in her, and so that Sakura never suffered from having to grow up without a mom. I didn't want to be like a parent to her, just like an older brother. So I teased her, and I'd pick fights with her – but I also walked her to school every day, and made her dinner, and sometimes got her out of bed in the morning.

"And she didn't always tell me things. I didn't always tell her things, either. But we were always drawn together, like there was an invisible force between us. If something bad happened to her, I knew. And if something bad happened to me, she knew, so I made sure that nothing bad ever happened to me. She was the center of my life, until I met Yukito.

"Yukito was a transfer student my first year of high school. We became friends almost instantly. Practically as soon as he sat down in the classroom. Which for me, is totally wild. I hadn't had a good friend my own age since I was like, six. He was just totally open, totally honest, totally accepting. He told the solid, unadulterated truth like it was the only thing that he knew, and he always made it somehow seem better than any story. He could look at anything – a book, a math problem, a relationship – and just absorb it, and understand, and accept it. Like everything new that he learned was beautiful. When you talked to him, you felt like nothing was off limits, because everything that was true was beautiful. He's just – he was just – he is just the most amazing person I've ever met.

"So when he got sick, like Mom did, I just… I thought it would kill me. I thought that I must be cursed, or something, to have the most important person in my life sicken in front of my eyes - not once, but twice. They even behaved the same way, while they were dying, always smiling, always reassuring me that they were fine, that everything was all right, not wanting to trouble me, wanting to protect me and keep my world gold-tinged and rosy for as long as possible.

"I really – I really thought it must have been my fault that Yukito got sick. And Mom, too. That should never have to happen to anyone twice."

Touya had been speaking with his head in his hands, voice pitched at a deep rumble, his inflection falling lower and lower as his story sank him further into his memories.

But the next time he spoke, while he still didn't take his hands away from his face, it was in a lighter voice, and in a register that didn't jar the bones to listen.

"And I got lucky," Touya said. "It didn't happen to me twice. I wasn't a match for Mom, but I was for Yukito." Again technically true, as long as Dr. Kobayashi didn't notice that Touya never actually said that it was bone marrow that he had been a match for. "One little transplant, and he was fine. Safe. Strong. I could hold him in my arms and not be afraid that he would break or disappear. And I knew, after that, that he'd never let me be alone.

"I… I felt like I had been exonerated. Like the universe had forgiven me for something, had granted me this wonderful gift, but in return had left me with an overwhelming responsibility. And I did feel overwhelmed by it – I used to wake up shivering, wondering how I could possibly handle the pressure. I still do, sometimes. After that, I knew that Yukito's life – Yukito's happiness was in my hands. Even more than before, I felt like I had a responsibility to guard him and to keep him safe – because I wouldn't be able to bring him back from the brink of death twice."

Dr. Kobayashi could tell that the interview was over. There was still some time left on the clock, and there were still many questions that she had left to ask him, but she knew from the watery lines in Touya's face and posture that to ask him to divulge any more to her tonight would just be cruel.

She knew, from long experience, that dredging up and then articulating slippery, half-repressed memories could be more exhausting than any amount of physical exertion. She allowed her patient to sit quietly for a long moment, and only spoke again when Touya seemed to have gotten the bone-weariness under control.

"Thank you very much for sharing that with me," she said. She didn't need to artificially magnify the sincerity in her voice. "I can imagine that that was extremely painful for you. But… I think you will benefit enormously from our sessions."

Touya nodded and gave her a small, tired smile.

"I think you're probably right."

…

Touya had been exhausted so many times in the past few days, had felt his back supplies of energy totally sapped, that he was almost starting to get used to it. It reminded him a little of the weeks just after he had given over his magic to Yukito, before he had gotten used to getting his vigor from food and sleep rather than magic, except in those days the sheer, effusive high of knowing that Yukito was safe had been enough to carry him through. He heaved himself down the hall to the door of his apartment in what he was beginning to think of as his usual leaden, stumbling gate, and scrabbled with the key until the door came open under his hands.

"Welcome home," Yukito called from what had quickly become his usual perch in their living room, piles of papers strewn every which way across the chair and onto the floor. "How was your appointment?"

"It was good," Touya said, sinking down onto the couch with a grateful sigh. "It was exhausting. But I think that this will really help."

Yukito gave Touya a fond, sappy smile, the kind that seemed to start at his eyes and trickle down to his lips rather than the other way around. The two of them, in spite of the nightmarish weekend they had shared and the slow pain of picking amongst the tattered shards of their relationship, had finally begun to submit, gratefully, into the arms of long habit.

Touya stretched his arms over the back of the sofa and made an inviting, noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Yukito allowed his smile to turn into a quiet laugh and stretched as best he could while still reclining in the chair before letting himself relax. He pushed himself to his feet and carefully picked his way across the crowded floor over to Touya's side.

"Mm," he murmured comfortably as he nestled into the soft cushions, allowing his head to rest in the cavity between Touya's shoulder and collar bone. Taking a chance, Yukito placed his hand on Touya's knee and whispered,

"I love you. Always."

Touya didn't say anything, but he snaked his arm around until his was holding Yukito in a tight, protective embrace.

"Why don't we do something fun this weekend?" Yukito asked, heartened by his love's good mood. "We should try to get out of the house." He didn't add that he wasn't sure their relationship could bear the tension of another Sunday like their last one.

"What do you want to do?" Touya asked quietly, the rumble of his voice making Yukito's nose itch.

"We could go see a movie," Yuki offered. He pulled his glasses off his face and placed them on the coffee table. He had to send them the last few inches of the way by magic so as not to disturb the comfortable circle that Touya's arms were making around his waist and shoulders. "Make dinner together. Maybe go out for dessert somewhere."

Yukito felt Touya's body tense, so was prepared for it when his gravity suddenly skittered crazily and bent sideways. He blinked a few times, easily, waiting for his brain and inner ear to get their bearings and for his world to sort itself back out.

Yukito was lying on his back, Touya sitting astride him, an approving smile adding a fourth dimension to his features.

"I'm going to take that as a 'yes,'" Yukito said drily, but his happy blush belied the surliness in his voice. Their bed had been used for nothing but cold sleep since he had been invited back to it.

"Mhm," Touya hummed, leaning down so that his body was covering Yukito's. "Let's."