Collaboration with Glorifiedscapegoat.

Shion and Nezumi ended up settling down in the warehouse adjacent to the first they'd broken into. In their initial investigation, they'd observed that the teens that had desecrated the first floor of the first warehouse had also spread their "good time" to the second floor. Nezumi wasn't too upset about abandoning the first warehouse; even if the second floor had been untouched, he wasn't comfortable staying only a floor above a teenaged revelry.

Luckily, with a little muscle, he and Shion were able to pry a few boards loose from the window of the warehouse next-door. This one was smaller and smelled more noxiously of stale air due to poor circulation, but it was untouched by debauchery and that seemed to please Shion. Apparently, the idea of two humans fornicating brought him great distress. Nezumi couldn't help but find this amusing, but he didn't push the issue. Sex was only fun to talk about when you were having it. Besides, he and Shion had more pressing topics to discuss.

"We should try another practice session," Nezumi said the day after he and Shion had fully settled into their second-floor hideaway.

Shion glanced up from his inspection of the stairs.

That was another bonus of this warehouse: it had unlocked access to the roof. Nezumi knew that staying hidden inside had its many benefits, but there was a part of him that longed to be outdoors. The rooftop access provided that relief, and also gave them a good vantage point to see if there was anything or anyone coming their way.

Shion pressed his lips together in thought and walked back toward where Nezumi sat. No doubt he was reliving the terrific failure of their last session, but still he said, "Yeah. We should." Shion picked up his half-emptied water bottle and took a sip. "Now that I've used my powers a bit, I think I've got a better feel for them."

Nezumi nodded. "I think I know what went wrong last time." Shion's eyebrows shot up and Nezumi snorted at the blatant intrigue and hope in the expression. "Finish your water break and meet me downstairs."

Nezumi rose from the crate he'd perched on and made his way to the stairs. He could hear Shion scrambling to follow, and he had barely made it down two steps before Shion was right on his heels.

Nezumi chuckled. "Look who's eager. And to think, only a few days ago you had a panic attack everytime I so much as mentioned your powers."

"First of all, I've never had a panic attack. Secondly, you shouldn't joke about that; panic disorders are serious, and a rising concern in the youth of today."

Nezumi's good mood evaporated. "Shut up. Never mind."

Everytime he began to think Shion was OK, the boy had to vomit up something ridiculous and piss him off.

The first floor of the warehouse was a graveyard of debris: cardboard boxes, chunks of rubble, food wrappers, crates, metal barrels, and struts from the ceiling. The leftover trash had no consistent personality. Nezumi couldn't guess what this industrial park's initial purpose was, but he knew what it was now: Useful. This was the perfect training ground for Shion. He had all sorts of things to practice on, and if he happened to lose control, they were far enough away from town that no one would be alerted by a loud noise or two. If anyone did hear the crashes, they'd likely chalk them up to the building crumbling due to old age and disrepair. It looked like the warehouse had done a decent job of falling apart already.

Shion's gaze darted around the room for a second before settling on Nezumi, all expectant attention. Nezumi repressed a gulp. This better work, or even I'm going to start to doubt.

Nezumi cleared his throat. "So," he said, "last we practiced I gave you a visualization of hands—my visualization. I think part of the problem was that. Imagining a hand works for me, but I'm not sure it's the right thing for your power. Telekinesis seems to be more about purpose than finesse."

Shion chewed his bottom lip. "Hm… You might be right. Whenever I feel my power, it's like a pressure that builds in my head, or an electric current that it hurts to repress."

"Right, and that's the other thing I think is wrong. Your power right now is too tied to your emotions."

Shion flinched. His eyes darted down and away, ashamed like a child who'd just had their wrist slapped by a disapproving school marm. Nezumi hurried on with his lecture so Shion would realize he had not meant the comment as a condemnation.

"Or rather, it's tied to high negative emotion," he clarified. "So far, we've been lucky; your powers worked when we needed them to because you were feeling stressed and you lashed out to protect yourself. But that's not control. Not even close. We have to get away from the association of your power with stress and fear, otherwise you're never going to be able to control it at will."

Shion dragged his head back up to meet Nezumi's gaze. "Alright. How do we do that?" Nezumi could see from the tightness in his brow that Shion was fighting not to be drowned by doubt. He was trying his best to view this moment as a clean slate, and not be discouraged or let his progress be informed by past failures.

Control. Nezumi toyed with the idea as he eyed the uncertain boy beside him. He had a sense of how he wanted to conduct this training session, but he needed Shion's full cooperation. Let's give it back to him, shall we?

"First step," Nezumi said. "Figure out what works as a visualization. Something grounding that makes sense to you."

Shion's tongue darted out to wet his lips. He sighed—not in resignation or displeasure, but more of a "time to get down to business" sort of huff—and crossed the room to sit on a crate. Nezumi busied himself with cataloguing the useful items in the room as Shion thought.

Preferably, they would begin practice with items that, if Shion happened to lose control and the objects shot in all directions, would not kill Nezumi on impact. Nezumi would never admit it, but ever since he'd partnered up with Shion, he had nightmares of Shion causing his untimely demise. Most times, it was because Shion had unwittingly led them into a trap—though in one iteration, he did it purposely. Sometimes, though, Nezumi dreamt he'd been caught in a bout of friendly fire shrapnel and lay bleeding as Shion cried and did nothing to save him. The projections of his unconscious mind were a riot.

Nezumi decided they'd start with the cardboard and cigarette cartons and work their way up to the chunks of rock and metal after Shion's abilities were more fine-tuned. He began to collect all the cartons he came across.

"I can't think of anything," whined Shion a moment later. Nezumi meandered back to him and Shion stared warily at the collection of rubbish held to Nezumi's chest. "There's… There's a huge spider on that one." He poked a finger in the direction of a carton and Nezumi craned his neck. Indeed, there was a nickel-sized brown spider hiding on the underside of the flap.

Nezumi hummed in acknowledgement. "Care to remove it?"

Shion wrinkled his nose and uttered a barely audible, "Seriously?"

"With telekinesis, of course. I wouldn't ask His Majesty to dirty his physical hands with such a task."

Shion didn't say "Seriously?" this time, but his glare implied it quite loudly. "Why don't you talk it off the flap?" he growled.

"Telepathy doesn't work on insects. I wish it did; I would love a pest-free house. Well, come on, then." He gestured with his chin, but Shion only scowled. "Not even gonna try? Shame." Nezumi plucked the spider carton from the group and tossed it across the room.

"Nezumi!" Shion gasped. "What if you hurt it?"

"Shion. Focus." Nezumi snapped his fingers in Shion's face. "Don't think I don't realize you're stalling."

Shion's mouth hung open for a second, still in the rictus of concern for the arachnid he'd snitched on, but then his expression shuttered and he slumped in his seat. Nezumi felt a little of his confidence slump with him, but he corrected his posture and injected some energy into his voice.

"What if you tried…resonating with the objects?" The idea sounded way hokier when he said it out loud.

"Resonating?" Shion said the word slowly, as if feeling the shape of it in his mouth.

Nezumi cleared his throat. "You're dealing with physical objects, so if you figured out a way to…feel their energy and harmonize with it— Stop laughing."

Shion clamped a hand over the grin spreading across his face. "I'm not," he tried, but Nezumi glared venomously at him and Shion began to shake with poorly suppressed laughter. "No, OK, sorry. I was, but I'm not laughing at your idea." Shion tamped down on his smile so that traces of it could only be seen in the corners of his mouth and the bright shine of his eyes. "It's just that it's weird to hear you talk like that. I didn't expect it."

"Well, I expect you to be more mature," Nezumi groused. He could feel his face heating. He tried to stop it by pretending it wasn't happening at all, but the satisfied look Shion wore told him it wasn't working. "Look, didn't your friend say you were practicing meditation before? To help control your powers? That's what I'm talking about."

"Safu?" The smile in Shion's eyes dulled.

Aw, crap. Nezumi knew that look: Memory, regret, longing. He supposed during the days of fighting for survival, and the stress of being tracked and chased down like an animal, Shion hadn't had much time to think of the family he left behind in Lost Town. That was always the downfall of staying stationary; it gave you time to think about everything and everyone you missed.

Nezumi had to salvage the moment and bring them back up to momentum before Shion fell too deep into reminiscence. He did the first thing that came to mind. His arms were full of cartons, so he tapped Shion in the shin with his boot.

Nezumi meant to say something snappy and snarky, too, but when Shion flinched and looked up at him, what came out was, "You alright?"

"Yeah. Fine. I..." Shion twisted his hands in his lap and glanced at the cigarette cartons in Nezumi's arms. "I was meditating," he managed. Shion stood and took a deep breath, as if he could suck the ache back in and swallow it down to choke on at a later, more private date.

Nezumi graced him with a fleeting smile, pretending to believe he'd just spaced out for a moment. "Great. Love the can-do attitude. I'm going to put these things on the barrel over there and we'll get started."

Shion squeezed his eyes shut and tried again to recreate the warehouse floor in his mind's eye. Nezumi had instructed him to take a good, hard look, and then to close his eyes and reimagine the things around him in as much detail as he could muster. It was a sort of practical meditation. Or, at least, that's what Nezumi said. Shion wasn't sure if it was BS or not, because on the one hand, he didn't believe Nezumi had more than surface level understanding of meditation—how could he? Unless he practiced it himself? Shion was having a hard time imagining Nezumi sitting still long enough to meditate.

But on the other hand, Nezumi seemed to have a little knowledge about a lot of things. A collector of the eclectic, so to speak, and Shion included himself among the odd things Nezumi had carelessly picked up in his mad dash toward freedom.

Shion thought he was doing an OKish job reimagining the warehouse. It was about his twentieth time doing it, and nothing had moved since the first, so by now he had a decent sense of his surroundings. He drew in a slow, deep breath and delved into the second level of meditation, in which he tried to feel the energies of the objects around him as though they were flowing into him and he out to them.

Back when Safu had taught him to meditate, it was mostly focused on breathing. Breathe eight seconds, hold, breathe out eight seconds, and hold again. Exercises designed to clear one's mind of negativity and steady heart rates.

What he was doing now was that and so much more. Holding an image in his mind was difficult and he couldn't help but feel self-conscious that he was just sitting around in silence while Nezumi had to stand by and watch the boring scene.

Focus, Shion reminded himself. Imagine the room, feel the energy. He wanted badly to sigh, or to stretch. His legs were crossed pretzel-style, and his thighs and butt ached. Hello, powers? Shion tried to divide his attention between resonating and probing his consciousness for any response. Do something. Anything. Please?

"Feel anything yet?"

Shion opened his eyes. The light in the room appeared fuzzy and muted as his sight reoriented itself. "Not sure…. But I don't think so," he confessed.

"Mm. Well. Worth a shot."

Shion blinked at him. "Wait. You're giving up?"

Nezumi shrugged a shoulder. "If it isn't working, and you don't think it will work, then yeah."

"We've been at this for twenty minutes."

"Yes, I'm painfully aware of that."

Shion narrowed his eyes at Nezumi. He felt used somehow. He refused to stand for it. "No, we're not giving up. I didn't sit here in this uncomfortable position for twenty minutes to get up a failure." He locked his eyes on the pile of cigarette cartons atop their rusted barrel pedestal and demanded they make their energy secrets known.

Nezumi chuckled. A low, throaty chuckle that, of course, sounded mocking, because Nezumi's default was derision. But Shion thought maybe he could detect a note of approval, or admiration in there as well. Perhaps affection?

Shion's cheeks burned, and he chastised himself for even thinking of it. Not now, he hissed at his stupidly quickening heart.

"Don't forget to breathe," Nezumi said. He walked around so that he was standing behind the metal barrel, opposite Shion. He clicked his tongue and chuckled again, and this time it was pure amusement.

Shion flicked his eyes up to look at him. Nezumi's hair lay loose and tangled over his shoulders, perfectly framing his lazy smirk and wickedly glittering eyes.

It had been a mistake to look. Shion's heart pounded louder.

"Cartons," Shion mumbled, both as a curse and a reminder of the matter at hand.

"You must really be straining," Nezumi said. "Your face is turning red."

Pressure began to build in Shion's skull the harder he tried to focus and suppress his embarrassment of feelings. He could hear a high keen in his ears. The world inside his sightline trembled and fuzzed.

It's happening again. Shion's mouth was so dry his tongue made a ripping noise as he peeled it from his palate. I'm losing it.

"Shion."

The cartons on the barrel vibrated. They were light, so the sound of their bodies bouncing on the metal was like the rapid heartbeat of a small, soft animal.

"Control it." Nezumi's voice was quiet. Out of hope? Fear? Respect for Shion's concentration? "You can do it, Shion."

I can't. Anxiety writhed in the pit of Shion's stomach. His power rattled him from the inside out. He clenched his jaw against it. He wanted to stop, but he didn't know how. If he gave in to the pressure, would the objects in his grasp explode out? Or would they submit, finally relieved to have a firm hand to guide them?

One of the cartons jumped and flopped back down. Shion's palms slickened. He swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. And then he let go.

The cartons shot into the air as if catapulted by a snapped rubber band. Shion gasped. Nezumi recoiled as the cigarette cartons rocketed towards him.

No! Shion grit his teeth. Not again. He would not suffer another loss of control at Nezumi's expense.

He could still feel the afterimage of the cartons in his mind, as if the pressure in his head had been the exact size and shape of them, but he hadn't realized it until he released his hold and sent them careening through the air. Something still connected them to him. An invisible tether, or a ripple of disturbed space between him and the objects he was acting on. Whatever it was, he needed to follow it and force the momentum in any other direction than Nezumi's.

Shion pushed through the drag on his mind and reached toward the projectiles. He didn't have enough time or control to tell them to stop, so he commanded them to part down the middle.

The cartons swerved around Nezumi and slapped the wall opposite. The impact reverberated through the wide open space for only a second before the air was silent once again.

Nezumi twisted around to look and then turned back to Shion, mouth set into a slight frown. "Why are you always throwing things at me?"

Shion opened his mouth. A number of responses came to mind, some mocking, some apologetic, but eventually he decided on plain logic. "You're always standing in the wrong place." He untwisted his legs and climbed to his feet. "When I let go just now, I pushed the cartons away from me, and you unfortunately happened to be standing that way. It's not my fault you had moved into the line of fire."

"Oh, so it's my fault, then?"

Shion crossed his arms. "This time, yes. Yes, it is. I avoided you, didn't I?" Shion paused. Blinked. "I avoided you."

He stared at the cartons, lined up neatly against the wall where they'd hit and slid down to the floor. They had been headed for Nezumi, but not a single one had touched him.

I did that, Shion realized. I used my powers to do that. His mouth popped open. "I avoided you! I did it!" He gave a little hop of excitement.

Nezumi's mouth quirked up at one corner. "Yes, you did."

Shion grinned at him, accomplishment burning in his chest like a miniature sun.

And then Nezumi had to go and add, "Kinda."

"What! No." Shion came around the metal barrel and shook a finger at him. "I controlled my powers. You just saw me do it."

"Yes. You did, I did, blah blah blah, but," Nezumi paused to lay a hand over Shion's accusing finger and push it out of his face, "you lost control. You corrected yourself at the last second, and I admit you did a good job of it, but you need a lot more practice before you can say you're really controlling your power."

Shion's sense of accomplishment flagged. Nezumi was right. He still had a long way to go. He toyed with the charms on his bracelet and sighed, heavy and fraught.

"You did a good job, though. I appreciate not being pummeled by cigarette cartons."

Shion frowned. Nezumi's voice sounded weird just now. Quick, and forced, and a little unsteady, as if he were acting out a part he wasn't comfortable with. He glanced up. Nezumi's grey eyes were dark and uncertain in a way that he had not seen before.

He looks guilty, Shion decided, and tilted his head as he tried to puzzle out why.

Nezumi's brows drew together, suddenly wary. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Just thinking," Shion said vaguely. "Is that the first compliment you've given me?"

"I…don't know? What kind of question is that?"

"It wasn't very good." Shion wrinkled his nose. "I mean, you corrected yourself at the last second, and I sort of get that you meant to boost my confidence, but you need a lot more practice before I can say that I really feel encouraged."

Nezumi stared at him so long that Shion couldn't keep the self-satisfied smile from his face.

"You little bastard," Nezumi deadpanned. "Are you mocking me?"

Shion stuck out his tongue. The look of unfiltered shock on Nezumi's face made the childish action more than worth it. Shion smirked and swiveled to go collect some more garbage to practice on.

"No, you don't," Nezumi growled and snatched at him. Shion hissed in pain as Nezumi's fingers closed around his wrist, and Nezumi immediately let go. "You're hurt?"

Shion cradled his hand against his chest. "It's just bruised. From falling yesterday. It's nothing."

Nezumi frowned, first at Shion's wrist, then at Shion's face. He exhaled through his nose. "Come on." He grasped Shion's shirt sleeve at the shoulder and dragged him toward the stairs.