.
There's a knock on his door. Ryou groans and drags himself from the couch to answer it.
He opens the door and is hit with a barrage of familiar features. And he knows. He knows before even anything registers properly who it is that stands on his threshold.
If there was any breath in him at all, it freezes up, breaks apart and scatters.
A pair of red eyes meets his own and Ryou realizes something is different. The edges that should be rough are somewhat softer. There is no half-lidded glare. No sharp eyebrows looming low between the eyes.
Ryou's heart beats fast. So fast it hurts.
He manages to breathe out a few words.
"What are you doing here?"
The other man sighs. He replies quietly—and that in itself is so uncharacteristic.
"I came here to find you."
Ryou's mind is a muddle of hows and whys, and yet some kind of insane hope explodes in him like a burst of a million colors. His heart swells, becomes almost too much for his chest. The rest of him goes numb. There's anticipation in his pulse, and fear in his gut, and he speaks with half a breath.
"What do you want from me?"
The other stares at him. His brows scrunch up. A line appears between them and crumples his forehead right in the middle. Ryou has never seen that line on that face before.
The red gaze lowers.
"I... came to say I'm sorry."
Ryou feels like his limbs are dissolving one inch at a time. His mind struggles to ignore his heart and whispers, hisses, roars, this can't be. It can't. It's not true.
The other steals and upwards glance and there is remorse in the shape of his eyes. A silent plea. A tender uncertainty.
Ryou looks into those eyes and feels like he's going to die.
It's real, he thinks.
He means it.
Heat scorches its way upwards and spills from his eyes.
It's true. This is it.
He can't tell if the sound he makes is a laugh or a sob. He can tell there's relief in it. He can tell, because his whole body unwinds. For the first time in his life, there is no weight pressing on his shoulders, his lungs, his throat and teeth and eyes. He is free.
He cries. He touches the other. He smiles. He thinks the other smiles, too, but he's not sure. He can't see. He only sees his own fist, clenching the fabric over the other's heart, and it's solid, and it's real, and he clutches at it like nothing has ever felt real before.
He thinks, it's happening. This is it.
He also thinks, this time it's not a dream. This time, it's the real thing.
He had never thought himself capable of feeling so light.
And-
"I'm sorry," he says too, because he is. He is sorry for all the things he didn't say when he should, and all that he didn't do when he could.
But it is okay now. It will be okay.
Because this time, this is it.
He can't tell when it happens. He can only tell that the lightness fades.
The numbness seeps out from his limbs, leaves them plain and heavy. His t-shirt is sticking on his sweaty chest. He blinks, and his stomach sinks into the mattress.
He used to dream of being angry. Of being afraid. Of shouting when he met him, of spitting defiance, of paying back pain with pain.
Now it's just this.
Again.
And again.
And again.
One might think that, after three years, the dreams would have stopped. Ryou thinks that, after three years, they should have stopped.
He wonders if he's descending into madness. He wonders if plunging into it will hurt less.
.