"Towa! Towa! Wake up! Towa, I'm here!" Fujieda is holding Towa close to his chest and looking down at his face, running one hand through Towa's hair in calming motions while he waits for the nightmare throes to subside.

I know you're here, dumbass, Towa thinks to himself, but he's too busy having trouble breathing, between the gasps and gulps afflicting his body, to actually say it. I'm not blind. The words don't come out, and he feels like he's dying, feels like he's suffocating, the soft night light is simultaneously too bright and too dark, it looks like it's going to blind him and the shadows look like they're moving, like there could be people there, like there are voices—

"I̸̛̬t̷̨̓'̴̺͐ṡ̵̜ ̴͉̄ả̷̝l̶̝̓r̴̳͌i̷̱̕g̵̥͑h̷̦̑t̸̢̿..."

"SHUT UP!" he screams, pushing Fujieda away and pulling himself up against the wall, hugging his knees close to his chest. Now he can breathe, but the problem is that he's breathing far, far too much, and his body is readying him for a fight, or more likely for flight, he needs to run, needs to get away, needs to go somewhere safe...

This is really stupid, observes the part of his brain that's not having the nightmare-induced panic attack. Maya is dead, you're not with her right now, you are safe.

Shut up, he repeats inside his own mind to that part, because just because it's right doesn't mean it gets to be condescending at him.

"...Towa..."

"The light—turn on the light—" he manages to say, he almost goes dizzy from saying because he doesn't have enough air for it, but it occured to him that if there are no shadows then he can't be convinced that they're—that she is hiding in them.

"—I will," he says, and immediately reaches over to the switch next to his side of the bed to turn the lights on (even though Towa himself could've done it with the switch that's next to his side of the bed).

Those lights are a lot more blinding than that feeble night light had been and it takes him a few seconds to be able to look at anything without his eye watering—or, well, watering more, it's puffy from crying already—and he tries to will his heart and breathing to slow down while he looks around the room to convince himself that he really isn't back there, Maya really isn't there, Mei is most definitely not there—

(because she's dead)

—but the thing that really helps him calm down is looking at Fujieda's concerned face. I've got it down bad, he observes to himself, distantly.

"Towa..."

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't look away from Fujieda, either. It's helping, looking at him. Calming.

Fujieda doesn't look away, either, and just keeps watching Towa's breathing for a few minutes.

"Are you—feeling better?" he asks, catching himself in the middle. He's been doing well at not saying that word, recently, but he's still not perfect. And while it wouldn't be a total disaster to say it right now, right after a nightmare is still not the best time for him to slip up.

Towa catches the hesitation and guesses what was going to go there, and funnily enough that's the last thing he needs to calm down enough to speak.

"Yeah," he says, slowly, after a while of chewing on it. "I think so."

He lets out a breath and smiles a bit. "Good. I'm glad. Do you need anything?"

"Smokes and booze," he replies almost on autopilot.

Fujieda's smile widens, because if Towa's asking for that, that means he's coming back to himself. He doesn't really approve of Towa's vices but they've been through this dance before, and he can't find it in himself to deny Towa them right after a nightmare like that. He hops off the bed to go fetch them for Towa.

By the time he's back Towa's no longer hugging himself, and looks a lot more relaxed, sitting cross-legged on the bed and looking at nothing. His face softens even more when he notices Fujieda, and he holds out his hands for his vices.

Fujieda gives him the bottle of whiskey and puts the cigarette between Towa's lips, then lights it for him and sits back down on the bed.

He takes a good, long drag of his cigarette, puffs the smoke out away from Fujieda, and starts sipping from his whiskey. It burns his throat as it goes down, even more so for how slowly he's doing it, but the burn helps clear his head.

Back when they first started living together the smoke really bothered him, but by now he's mostly used to it. It helps that smoke tends to get into everything so now his whole apartment smells of it; he couldn't help but get accustomed. He fetches his phone from the bedside table and begins to catch up on his emails and notifications.

"Sorry for waking you," Towa says, eventually, looking down at his legs. "What's the time?"

"Six fifty-seven," he replies, though the blackout blinds block the light sufficiently well that it could have been four AM or four PM for all either of them knew. His alarm is set for 7AM so he wasn't awoken that much earlier than he'd have had to wake up anyway. "It's not a problem, you don't need to apologise."

Fujieda says that every time. "Hmm," is Towa's noncommittal response. He pulls another drag of his cigarette in, then slowly puffs it out, reaching out to tap it against the ashtray he keeps on his bedside table. The compromise he and Fujieda reached in the end was that he wouldn't keep his cigarettes by the bed but he would keep the ashtray for these inevitable mornings after a nightmare.

"Today's was particularly bad, huh?" he asks after about half an hour, once Towa looks—mostly grounded.