Right. Home. Still on the sofa, it seems. What...?

The heater is on low and Towa has a thin blanket covering him, or he did before he sat up just now. Ryō is also still on the sofa, and Towa's legs are still on his lap, but he's fast asleep, snoring softly and peacefully, in a position suggesting he fell asleep while still doting on Towa.

...so, so, so in over his head.

He gently extricates himself from his fiancé and grabs his phone, still in his pocket. 4:17AM, so he didn't sleep that long. He sidles over to Ryō and gently shakes him awake.

He's slower to wake up and when his eyes focus on Towa he smiles softly. "Yo," he says, echoing Towa's frequent greeting.

It's a recent development, him taking a bit to wake up; back when they first started "dating" he used to jump to wakefulness very quickly. Probably a relic of his paranoia.

(Is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?)

"Let's shower," he says, tugging on Ryō's shirt (hopelessly wrinkled) to pull him to his feet.

He yawns, then covers his mouth, mumbling, "Morning breath." But he does follow Towa, looking at his ridiculously expensive watch and grimacing a tad.

"It's not morning," he replies, leading the way to the bathroom.

"Yes it is," counters Ryō, smiling.

Towa opens the smart home app on his phone to lower the blackout blinds in the living room and turn the lights on (warm, and low brightness) as he climbs the stairs. The downstairs bathroom does have a shower but the ensuite's is bigger.

He strips immediately, dumping his clothes in a heap next to the door, then steps under the shower head and turns the water on. It's cold, really cold, and it wakes him all the way back up and makes him breathe harder as his body starts to tense his muscles to deal with the chill, and for the minute or so it takes to get warm his awareness is focused exclusively on his body.

His skin is covered in a truly staggering number of scars. His face is the least scarred part of his body, probably because Maya didn't want him to look ugly (and so the fact that he does anyway is a "fuck you" to her that he sometimes tells relishes), but most everywhere else has something. The most eye-catching one is the large one smack dab in the middle of his chest, from the center of his clavicle to just above his navel, but he also has two framing his right pec from above and below, six on his abs, one on each side of his stomach, a horizontal one crossing his lower back, one right below and to the center of each shoulderblade (a past lover once commented that it looked like someone had ripped Towa's wings off), a long one crossing the back of his right hand, and that's not even half of the ones on his upper body. Not to mention the self-inflicted ones, of course: a myriad parallel lines along both wrists and forearms.

And he loves them all. Even the ones caused by Maya—though not inflicted by her, she didn't like to get her own hands dirty (and besides, Towa was her clients' canvas, not hers, and she liked it that way). But now they're his, he owns them, poisoned gifts or not they are him. He doesn't know who he'd be without them. It's not even just a matter of self-image; they have influenced so much of his life, and still do. He loves them and, in a sort of twisted sideways way, through them, loves himself.

Ryō's body is equally covered in scars.

Ryō does not love his scars. He is learning to, but he doesn't.

That's okay. Towa can love them for him.

When Ryō steps into the shower, Towa reaches for his hand then pulls him close to rest his head on Ryō's chest. In these situations he does like being shorter, so that he can wrap his arms around Ryō's midsection and listen to Ryō's heartbeat.

Ryō is taller, broader, more muscular, but somehow the way Towa hugs him makes Ryō feel like he's the one being held and protected, not Towa. There's a quiet strength in Towa, something hidden so deeply you can't help but underestimate him, that Ryō couldn't help but underestimate him. He's not sure if anyone else has ever felt this way about Towa—he kind of hopes not, there's a jealous part of him that wants as much of Towa for himself as he can have—but he knows that as long as Towa's by his side he can do anything.

He pulls away and takes a proper look at his fiancé (!!!!). "You're bulking up," he says.

Towa looks down at his body. "Am I?" To him he still looks scrawny and thin, sort of like a soggy dishcloth in the shape of a human being.

"Yeah. I believe so."

He just shrugs and grabs the soap to start washing Fujie- Ryō.

This is a little ritual of theirs. They can't always shower together, between their mismatched sleep schedules and Ryō being perpetually busy, but they try to take the opportunity when it comes up, and then they wash each other, which is inefficient and time-consuming and very very silly.

It's not a sex thing—or, well, not necessarily a sex thing and not just a sex thing. It's mostly an... identification thing. Seeing themselves in each other, seeing a body that's just as damaged as theirs, just as scarred, and caring for it. Ever since Towa first saw it, first saw Fujieda's body, he's felt this way, and he later found that F- Ryō felt the same. They're the same.

They're not alone.

So it's an almost worshipful thing, lathering each other up, slowly working over each other's damage, giving each other's bodies attention and love. Each scar, each mark of the pain they've both felt at the hands of people who should've cared for them, each reminder of the hurt they've started to help each other heal from.

It is sometimes also a sex thing. They love each other, and paying such close attention to each other's bodies does occasionally elicit those feelings. But tonight they're just spending the time together. Licking each other's wounds, as Towa once put it.

"Dry your hair."

"It's dry enough."

"Dry it better."

"I don't mind it."

"I do."

"Not my problem."

"It looks like a wet dog."