"Yes, Haruto?"

"What's wrong with Mei?"

"I separated her from her heart and body. She won't be able to corrupt you anymore."

"...she's dead?"

He's hugging his knees, curled up inside a concrete tunnel in a playground. He looks young, though, a teenager, and his clothes are soaked through because of the rain. Or because of the crying.

Towa doesn't know how to answer that. He doesn't remember.

"...it's because of you," he says, slowly, his cold rage and horror turning into blazing hot fury.

...can he really argue? Even if he could, would he? Fujieda is right, it is his fault.

He lunges at Towa, pushing him out of the playground tunnel and landing on top of him. His features are much younger than Towa is used to, the Fujieda of that picture with Mei rather than the Fujieda of the present, but the look in his eyes is so, so very familiar.

He is going to kill Towa.

Towa doesn't scream this time. He just opens his eye suddenly, gasping for air, and notices that he's covered in sweat and being strangled—

Hugged. He's being hugged. Not strangled.

"I'm here, Towa, I'm here," Ryō repeats, softly, like a mantra. He looks half asleep still but he's holding onto Towa and running his fingernails against Towa's back in light circles against his scars.

It tickles. Not in a bad way. And it brings him to the present, so he gets used to his body again.

He pushes himself up and... notices he has an erection.

Figures.

Ryō notices it too then looks up at Towa. "Was it... not a nightmare?" he asks, his voice slurring a bit.

"It was. But it ended with that day you jumped me on the playground." In the dream for some reason Fujieda wasn't an adult but the time it happened in real life he very much had been. But Towa's not going to mention that part.

"...oh." He pulls away, looking—embarrassed? No, ashamed.

Towa rolls his eye and reaches for his phone to look at the time. 8AM.

He still needs sleep, so he kicks his bed covers off to let the cooler (if not altogether cool) air help dry his skin, rearranges himself on the bed so that he's lying down again, and closes his eye.

"...you're... going back to sleep?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want me to..." Leave?

Towa opens his eye and fixes Ryō with the most unimpressed look he can muster.

...he smiles. "Of course," he says, before lying back down to try to get back to sleep, too.

Good enough.

Towa wakes up before Ryō does. His relationship with his sleep has always been shaky and over the past several months it's been downright hostile so when he's awake and it's past 10AM and he's had nightmares two consecutive nights the idea of trying to catch some more sleep fills him with anxiety.

The silence fills him with anxiety, and learning the reason why didn't actually make it stop happening. In fact, if anything, it's made it worse, because now he has a face and a name to give to his fear.

He turns the TV on before he can get too deep in his head. The volume is low and it's very dim and the content doesn't matter; he just needs the background drone that almost blurs into white noise, some source of randomness to disrupt the patterns of his thoughts. He pulls himself up so he's leaning against the headboard and lets his eye unfocus on the colours and shapes that don't need to be meaningful.

Ryō stirs a bit but doesn't wake until about a half hour later. He, too, has often found the meaningless noise comforting, and as attuned as he's become to signs that Towa's having a nightmare, signs of Towa's own comfort are soothing.

What's quite surprising to him is to notice Towa's fingers interleaved in his hair when he finally comes to.

"Morning."