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He dispenses Johan’s pills and hands them to him with a glass of water, checks underneath his tongue with a clinical swipe of his fingers to make sure he’s swallowed.
Day after day, rinse and repeat.
Johan’s eyes have a gleam to them.
Tenma’s come to simply call it devious. There’s nothing nefarious about it, nothing more than the luster of juvenile amusement. They’re playing a game, cat and mouse, and Tenma knows most certainly that he is the mouse.
The empty glass is returned to him.
“Do you need anything else?”
Johan takes a moment to respond.
“Yes,” he says finally. “Come closer and I’ll tell you.”
With a small sigh, Tenma shuffles just so up the length of the bed. There’s no harm in indulging him. He’s not as formidable a threat as he likes to pretend he is. Not overtly, not now at least, with his damp hair and pale blue pyjamas.
His hands are in his lap as he sits cross-legged up by the headboard, perfectly demure and complacent. His little smile widens.
“Closer,” he urges. “I’ll whisper it to you.”
The man he was before everything would have shied away from the palpable tension of the moment. Alarm bells going off. Danger, danger. That sort of thing. Now, although hesitant, Tenma leans in—so trusting, too trusting, he knows—and Johan meets him halfway.
He doesn’t quite flinch when Johan moves, but an instinctual response kicks in all the same. His heart slams hard in his chest, the sharp jerk of panic crashing like a wave over him before he registers the flash of warmth, the faint pressure against the hollow of his cheek.
He’s kissed him.
It takes a moment for Tenma’s body to become his own again. When it does he rears back slowly, hesitantly, staring uncomprehendingly at the curious tilt of Johan’s head. Then come the questions, a barrage flooding every corner of his consciousness, too many to know where to start, which one among hundreds to begin with, though what the fuck is going on seems as good a place to start as any.
In the end, Johan beats him to the punch and poses one of his own.
“Are you going to ask again,” he says quietly, “if there is anything else I need?”
Numbly, Tenma does just that: “Is there?”
It isn’t until Johan lifts his hand and softly taps two pale fingers against his parted lips that the true depth of his intent becomes clear. Tenma sucks in a shallow breath, finds himself blinking wildly like he’s waking up from a paralyzing nightmare.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not playing your game, Johan,” he sighs. “It’s late.”
“There is no game,” Johan insists. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes.”
“That I find you attractive—is that really so hard for you to believe?”
“You—”
“Are you worried about my state of mind? I’m a consenting adult. I can make my own decisions.”
“The court seems to think otherwise.”
Johan looks unaffected by the jab. Instead he pinches his brows together and bows his head, his expression going soft.
“Please,” he murmurs, “I’ve been good, haven’t I? Don’t you think I deserve a reward?”
Tenma startles, every inch of him screeching to a violent halt. A shiver runs up the length of his spine and he tries futilely not to let it show. It comes out of seemingly nowhere, the admission, but Tenma knows it’s never that simple or straightforward with Johan. It’s been on his mind, this, whatever it is, for an unquestionably long time. It’s a frightening thought—yet not nearly as frightening as the way Tenma’s body reacts to the honeyed words, not with horror, but undeniable interest.
He stays that way for far too long, frozen and immobile, terrified of his own inaction, and Johan sees his moment of weakness as apparent permission to continue.
Unsteadily he rises to his knees, balancing on the soft mattress, and slides his hands up, up, up until they rest just below Tenma’s shoulders, flat against the jut of his collarbones, separated from his flesh and soul only by the worn fabric of his sleep shirt.
Tenma finds that where there should be concern, there is not. He knows it’s his responsibility to take initiative and cut Johan’s antics short, but he does not. He should be wary of Johan’s hands so close to his throat, but instead he shuts his eyes and forgets how to breathe when soft lips meet his.
Slowly, deliberately, Johan works to coax a response from him—and he gets one. He gets what he wants, he always does. Mind utterly blank, Tenma meets his every small, unpracticed kiss, guiding him easily into another. Their noses bump, Johan’s as cold as every inch of him, and the hand in Tenma’s shirt curls into a trembling fist.
“You know, Doctor,” Johan says after, his breath hot against Tenma’s lips, “I’ve never done that before.”
Tenma swallows and searches his sluggish mind for a response; he’s not entirely sure whether he’s surprised by the confession itself or the simple, raw honesty behind it.
But Johan speaks first.
“I wanted you to have it,” he admits quietly.
There’s color high in his cheeks, an unmistakeable rosy pink flush, his breath hitching with every inhale. The sharpness is gone from his eyes. A face that never really betrays anything, Tenma thinks, captivated, brought to heel by the slightest sliver of affection.
━━━
After he’s killed in Ruhenheim, Johan moves into Tenma’s apartment, a new one in Frankfurt with two bedrooms and an abundance of natural light.
That he’s gone is the official story, a flawless fairytale ending penned to placate the media. It’s better that way.
And it’s better, too, the decision to hand him over to Tenma rather than tuck him neatly away in the padded room of some institution to be forgotten, or even the most infallible of prisons, where he might easily talk his way out with his pretty smile and talented mind. Keeping him confined exactly where he wants to be is their only way to guarantee a life sentence he will not run from.
Tenma has plans, aspirations, of course, as anyone does, but he puts forward his desire to delay them until a sense of stability returns to the lives of those uprooted and all those at fault are held accountable. He takes one for the team, as the saying goes.
But though the government might see his cooperation that way, bland and black-and-white, that’s not what it is for Tenma. Johan is his responsibility, has been for the better part of a decade. His unshakeable curse, cursed in turn to inevitably end up back in Tenma’s orbit no matter how far he strays. In that curious way, neither of them will ever be free.
Not that Johan seems to mind the limitations of his new life. He’s not to step foot outside of city limits unaccompanied, or leave the country under any circumstances. Even so, wherever he does go, he goes unmonitored and unchecked. And yet, he’s never abused this gracious privilege he’s been granted.
He always comes back, always waits for Tenma’s keys to jangle in the front door before heading into his bedroom for the night. He’s always on his very best behavior, though it’s hard to tell at times whether it’s Tenma’s rehabilitative influence at play, or that of the cocktail of drugs he’s on.
Those, unlike his comings and goings, are regulated as heavily as can be.
There’s Doctor Schauer on Tuesdays and Doctor Braun on Fridays. The same patronizing questions, again and again, that Johan later relays to him from across the kitchen table. How are you feeling? How are you sleeping? Here, take these, two with your dinner. Any changes in appetite? Energy levels? Any urges to harm yourself or those around you? Take the blue ones every morning and the pink ones in the evenings; we’ll see in a month or so if they’re the right fit. Have a nice day. Be good, now.
A parole officer of sorts—an agent with high enough clearance to have access to Johan’s file—joins the fray once or twice a month, too. They’re surprise visits, of course. Any day of the week, any time of the day, as though she hopes to catch a violent act of unprovoked murder red-handed.
Her narrow eyes dart around the apartment to make sure that Johan is present, that he’s well-behaved and doped up to the fucking gills. She checks that Tenma is still alive and breathing and not lying broken on the bathroom tile with nothing but a trail of blood to follow down the hall to the open front door, dark and viscous, disappearing like ink into the starless night.
━━━
“You look tired,” Tenma tells Nina over the gurgling of the coffee machine.
She acknowledges him with a little hum from where she sits curled up at the kitchen table in the milky glow of the morning sunlight, copying notes from her legal pad onto a block of flashcards in tidy bullet points.
“I, um, was shadowing at Falke yesterday until about nine,” she explains, voice flat and distracted. “An hour to get home from the office. Traffic like you wouldn’t believe. And between then and now and some shitty dumplings and maybe three hours of sleep, I’ve just been trying to make sense of what I’m reading.”
“And how’s that going for you?”
“Wonderfully.”
“You need more rest,” Tenma tells her somberly, but the words taste sour as soon as they roll off his tongue. Given his profession and the countless years it took him to obtain his degree, he knows he cannot in good conscience tell her to just take it easy.
Nina hums, amused, easily catching onto his train of thought. She’s a clever one, with a wicked sense of humor to boot. Seeing her smile through the cloud of stress buzzing like a swarm around her eases a fraction of Tenma’s worries; it helps to know she hasn’t descended completely into apathy. She’s satisfied with what she’s doing, as difficult as it is, still zeroed in on the goal she’s set her sights on.
The coffee machine beeps and Johan rises swiftly from his seat at the table. He comes up close just as Tenma spoons two sugars into Nina’s mug and picks it up without a word to take back to her, warns her with a soft, “Anna,” before setting it down beside her papers.
Her response and their subsequent hushed conversation go unheard as Tenma crouches down to yank open the freezer drawer, its rattles and creaks accompanying his search for something decently identifiable to thaw out for dinner that evening.
He’s due in at the clinic by eight. Three follow-up appointments and a consultation later in the day, then a meeting with the department head to discuss the extension of what was supposed to be his temporary contract. He’s grown to like the place. It’s quiet, pays well, doesn’t fuck with his head.
“I’ll go,” he hears Johan say, clear as a bell even over the icy rustling of the frozen peas.
Tenma slows down to eavesdrop, making as little noise as possible as he pulls out the last of what he needs.
“Go where?” asks Nina.
“Sit the exam for you.”
“Funny.”
“Sure,” Johan agrees. “Just give me something to wear.”
Tenma slides the drawer shut and rises from the floor. At the table across the kitchen, Nina is looking wide-eyed at her brother.
“You’re serious.”
Johan says nothing. While his shoulders jerk in an attempt at a casual shrug, his smile is telling. He’s serious, yes, but beyond that he’s hopelessly excited for a chance to do something troublesome.
“That’s not exactly legal,” Tenma chimes in.
Johan turns to him, eyes bright. On the inside, he’s laughing. It’s entertaining to him that Tenma seems to think he has any respect for the law. Besides, it’s just a silly exam. It’s not murder.
Well-versed in wrangling Johan’s craftiness, Tenma fixes him with a severe glare. He knows the consequences. He knows what happens when rules get broken.
“It’s Tuesday,” Nina says quietly. “You have your appointment.”
“That’s later.”
There’s a beat of silence, then Nina hums contemplatively.
Tenma blinks at her in surprise. “You’re—Nina, you’re not actually considering it, are you?”
She glances at him. “Why not? He’s done it before.”
“Yes, but that doesn't—”
“And I know he knows the material. Better than me, at least. He wouldn’t even have to cheat.”
Tenma’s words fail him. He has no doubt both Nina and Johan see the irony of breaking the law to sit a law exam. Perhaps they find it funny. They would.
He clears his throat in attempt to ready a weak rebuttal, but Johan interrupts him before he thinks of anything particularly clever to say.
“You wouldn’t tell on us, would you?” he asks coyly, his voice syrupy smooth. Every word out of his mouth is another coil around Tenma’s throat. The hold Johan has on him is absurd.
Nina’s eyes dart to her brother for an instant before she turns her attention to Tenma with a sneaky little half-smile, so much like Johan’s in its deceptive innocence.
They are nothing like each other in theory, polar opposites in nearly every aspect of their respective existences—which makes it that much more terrifying, as Tenma’s come to learn, when they put their heads together and agree unequivocally, when they go up against him, two pairs of watery blue eyes frozen in secret laughter.
He can’t possibly condone such a thing, Tenma reasons. He’s there to ensure that rules are followed. The law is the law, and Johan is already on laughably thin ice. Yet, for one—he does not want to throw a wrench in the way of their bonding, even over something as unethical as the concept in question.
“If he gets caught,” says Nina, “we’ll lie and say you had no idea.”
“I won’t get caught.”
They’ve grown very close, the chasm between them stitching itself shut with remarkable ease. Johan makes a considerable effort to meet Nina’s outstretched hand halfway. Whether his perseverance is born of a genuine desire to atone, or simply to find another ally in a sea of unfriendly faces, Tenma doesn’t know. He imagines not even Johan himself does.
And two—as dire as the fallout of Nina getting figured out would be, a part of Tenma, the dark, snickering part influenced by Johan’s inherently indifferent approach to the very notion of consequence, can’t help but want to see if they can get away with it.
━━━
It’s trial and error, as it always is with medication of this caliber: cocktails of antipsychotics and antidepressants, sedatives and mood stabilizers, each with a list of side effects more disheartening than the last.
Some combinations numb him, clogging his mind until he’s too far gone to keep his eyes open. Others make him anxious, restless and irritable, send his heart pounding so furiously in his chest he seems to want to crawl out of his own skin. Then there’s the nausea, severe enough for Tenma to find him curled around the toilet bowl on more than one occasion, dry heaving and shivering, pale and feverish with sickly gray bruises under his eyes.
They’re the lesser of two evils, the pills, Tenma knows this. Factually, he knows this. Following a lifetime of symptoms gone unnoticed, untreated and heightened by violence and trauma and hordes of awful, old men in Johan’s head telling him what to do and who to be, they’re a necessity. They help.
Still, Johan despises them at first, refuses anything more potent than a handful of vitamins. He can’t stand the way the drugs make him feel, any of them, all of them, foggy and jittery and absent all at once. Decidedly wrong, he says, like a stranger in his own body, an invader unwelcome in his own mind.
His mood suffers the consequences, his frustration with himself exacerbated by the brutal headaches that come and go in waves. He gets a handful of good days followed by a series of terrible weeks that steal the light from his eyes and the steadiness from his hands. His eyes go glassy and dead, his mind untethered, far away from him. He turns frantically towards noises that don’t exist, skittishly tracking shadows in dark corners that are not really there. Frightened, confused, upset with his own apparent weakness, he seethes in silence. And with him, that’s never a good thing. It’s a dangerous thing, letting him spend too much time in his own head. There’s no combination quite as deadly as a mind as brilliant as his with nothing left to lose.
It takes patience and it takes trust, careful reassurance and countless sleepless nights. They push through fragile, discouraged tears and bouts of hospitalization—but it gets better. One after another, their little victories add up to create something resembling a sense of normalcy.
All the while, Tenma sees the looks on people’s faces. They wonder why he cares. How he can possibly feel sympathy for Johan considering everything he’s done. They try and fail to wrap their heads around why he wants to help, why he wants so desperately to be the one person Johan can reach out to without fear of repercussion when he’s lost and lonely and hurting.
Certainly, Tenma wants. It’s his job. He swore a goddamn oath to be there for those in need and he’ll lay down his life to fulfill it if it comes down to that. But above all else, he needs. He has to do this, him and him alone. As it stands, he’s the only one who can help, the only one whose help Johan will accept, the only one who’s truly seen the ugliest side of him.
He’s the only one who understands.
━━━
There’s a flush that spreads from Johan’s pretty face down to his heaving chest, around the pale insides of his thighs, all pink and marked up, slick with their sweat.
With trembling hands he holds his legs up, pressing them together against his middle. His nails hook like claws into his skin and he whimpers low in his throat with Tenma’s every thrust deep inside his body.
He’s so small like this, folded nearly in two, soft and beautiful and so tight it makes Tenma’s head spin. The lace panties he wore to tease Tenma half to death, a lovely dusty pink like the blush across his cheeks, are soaked through and pushed crassly to the side to get them out of the way, and with every glimpse Tenma catches of them he’s forced to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek, to curl his fists into the sheets to keep from spilling entirely too soon.
Beneath him, Johan’s shaking grows gradually more urgent, less graceful, the sharp arch of his back more pronounced as his body clenches painfully hard around Tenma. He’s losing himself just a bit too much, his eyes going just a hint too glassy, his mind not altogether there.
There’s a threshold Tenma’s learned to pinpoint, a fine line between pleasure and complete disassociation.
He eases up to pry Johan’s arms from around himself, and Johan lets him without protest. His thighs are pulled apart, his legs lowered gently to the mattress on either side of Tenma’s hips, drawn up just so. Softly, Tenma murmurs senseless nothings to him to recapture his attention without startling him too badly. He maintains his pace, rocking slowly into him, until Johan’s eyes focus and he looks at him and sees him.
Tenma offers a small smile, leans down to give him a kiss—for being a good boy, always so good for him, so perfect and obedient—and eagerly Johan rises up to meet him halfway. Their noses bump as he tilts his head and deepens the kiss, and his hands curl tightly into Tenma’s hair just at the nape of his neck, holding him close, that needy desperation so unrefined, so unlike him.
Arms wind around Tenma’s shoulders and heels dig into his lower back, and Johan ruts shamelessly up against him, urging him wordlessly to move please move, to give him more and more and more. Gladly, Tenma does. Harder first, reveling in the delirious sound that’s punched from Johan’s throat, then faster too. Blue eyes screw helplessly shut, tears welling fast underneath those pretty, pale lashes. Like a goddamn dream.
Johan doesn’t let up until he’s all too close, thighs tense and trembling, Tenma’s middle crushed snugly between them. When he finally untangles himself he takes Tenma’s wrist in his fingers and brings it down to his own throat. Gently, carefully at first, he presses Tenma’s hand down. Waits a second. Then presses again, harder, to get his point across.
Tenma falters, breath hitching in his throat. Heat flares up in his chest, anxiety suddenly indistinguishable from arousal. It’s not the sort of thing he’s done before. Nothing like it. And though he understands the theoretical appeal well enough, the idea of intentionally causing Johan pain for the sake of an instant of pleasure is something else altogether in practice.
All the same, Tenma’s pulse picks up. The knot in his stomach tightens and the wave of sheer need that rockets through him leaves him breathless. Gauging his reaction, liking what he sees, Johan’s eyes go wide and pleading, fucking begging Tenma to choke him out.
Powerless to resist Johan’s desires, however dark, Tenma cautiously, experimentally shifts his weight to put more pressure against Johan’s throat. He digs the pads of his fingers into the sides of his neck, and in the same instant he fucks up into him hard. With a strangled gasp Johan goes completely slack underneath him, eyes rolling into the back of his head. His cheeks mottle pink from the strain and blotchy from the tears that keep coming, every inch of him so wonderfully delicate, and he clings fervently to Tenma’s hand not with the desire to tear it away, but to bring it down harder. Harder. Fucking harder.
Tenma feels it all: every futile attempt to draw air, every little twitch of muscle. Johan’s pulse is jackrabbiting under his palm. Johan’s life in his hands. And Christ, he’s gorgeous that way, completely and utterly and entirely at Tenma’s mercy.
Something vital shorts out in Tenma’s brain just then, makes the heat in his gut roil and a vicious shiver run up the length of his spine. He’s enjoying this. He’s indulging in Johan’s twisted little fantasy and he’s enjoying it, inhibitions be damned. He wants more, something more, whatever else Johan has to offer. He doesn’t think he can live without it any longer, not after this.
He’s so lost in the blistering rush of his realization that he almost misses the moment Johan’s body goes taut and snaps suddenly forward, nails slicing hard into Tenma’s skin. The heat around him squeezes so hard it hurts and Tenma’s vision whites out in an instant, his orgasm ripping violently through him, the ringing in his ears deafening like church bells. He’s in purgatory. He’s in hell. He’s fucking dying.
When the roaring finally settles down and his body returns to him in increments, Tenma starts with cataloguing the little things. His head in the dip of Johan’s shoulder, an arm slung across his chest. He’d gone and collapsed, unable to hold himself upright. Deep breath, in and out. He feels Johan’s thighs bracketing his hips. They’re pressed together, flush against one another, sated and sticky and warm all over. Johan’s chest is rising and falling entirely too quickly. His hands are on either side of Tenma’s head, absently petting his hair in a monotonous back-and-forth.
With a tired, strangled little groan in lieu of an actual, coherent warning, Tenma slips carefully free and rolls himself to the side, freeing Johan from the otherwise inescapable brunt of his larger weight.
There’s silence for a moment, a handful of seconds, the spring rain pattering cheerfully against the windowsill outside.
Then Johan giggles, airy and lightheaded.
“I knew you'd get off on that,” he teases.
Tenma turns his head to find Johan already looking back. He watches him break into laughter again, soft and hoarse and utterly exhilarated, and it’s startling to the core how beautiful he is this way, glowing and flushed, completely uninhibited and lost hopelessly in the throes of genuine contentment. He’s happy. He’s happy and it makes Tenma’s chest swell that he was a part of making that happen.
With a little snort, Johan nose scrunches up, and Tenma finds he’s too fucking enamored in that moment to feel the slightest hint of shame.
━━━
Tenma doesn’t wake when the bed dips under foreign weight, nor when the first of the whimpers break the bleak silence. It’s a frightened, desperate sob that finally does it, that jerks him straight out of unconsciousness.
Disoriented at first, he sits up and squeezes his eyes shut so hard it aches. It’s dark. He’s not alone. So that’s what’s happening. He takes a deep breath and braces himself for what’s to follow. It’s not an unfamiliar scenario, this. They’ve been here before. They’re here often.
He switches on the rickety lamp to the left of the bed and turns slowly to Johan as the orange glow sluggishly fills up the room.
First comes a gentle touch, feather-light at the wrist, the slightest scrap of physical contact. A whisper of Johan’s name. And again, louder. Then: Wake up. You’re dreaming. Wake up, it’s not real. Small nothings to reassure him, to ease him out of the darkest recesses of his mind.
The next nudge is more insistent. Immediately, Johan flinches away, his body coiled tight in distress. It’s one of those dreams. He shrinks back like he’s desperate to get away from something, from someone, from whatever’s being done to him. Everything is a threat, all of it. It’s as real to him as the waking world. His mind distorts Tenma’s words, the feeling of Tenma’s hands on his skin, and he looks so horribly afraid it breaks Tenma’s heart.
It’s routine. He slips into Tenma’s room more often than not at odd hours of the night and early morning, dragged awake by horrid dreams or unabating headaches. Sometimes both. Usually, it’s both. He suspects, he’s told Tenma, it’s the chalky white tablets he takes for the migraines that make his sleep more restless. Still, it’s better than paralyzing pain; not everyone can say they’ve had two bullets taken out of their head in the span of ten-odd years, after all. He’s unkillable, is what he is, impossible to get rid of, like a cockroach—as Nina very pleasantly tends to tell him.
He invites himself inside without waking Tenma and curls up under the covers on the empty side of the bed. There’s always an empty side, conveniently enough. Tenma’s learned to make himself small; Eva had the tendency to sprawl. But the nightmares do not always cease when Johan is no longer alone. He seeks Tenma out because the constant, comforting presence grounds him, but even with that anchor warm and breathing and alive next to him, the worst of the horrors sometimes fight their way back in.
When Tenma finally wakes him, it’s with a vice-like grip around his forearms and a sharp shake impossible for anyone to sleep through. Johan jerks back, his eyes snapping wide open, blank and terrified and so horribly sad.
Tenma’s grip loosens only barely, and he uses his voice to guide Johan’s ragged breathing back to normal. In and out. Just breathe. You’re home. It wasn’t real. You’re okay. You’re safe. Slowly, as it steadies, Johan looks distrustfully around the room. Something in the corner catches his eye and he frowns, tries briefly to fight against Tenma’s grip, before finally acquiescing and meeting his eyes. His gaze focuses and the abject relief that floods his face as recognition kicks in makes Tenma want to cry.
“Okay, there you go,” he murmurs. He pulls Johan towards him to keep him from inching any closer to the steep drop at the edge of the bed. “You with me?”
Jerkily, Johan nods.
“Water?”
Johan shakes his head.
“Okay. You’re okay.”
He doesn't tell and Tenma doesn't ask. All he does is pat the soft, rumpled sheets in empty space right beside him and scoot back, giving Johan room to make his own decision: to curl up alone in his own little bubble, just close enough for comfort, or to scramble into Tenma’s open arms.
Johan’s choice is always the same.
His trembling fingers grasp decisively at the front of Tenma’s sleep shirt. It’s a desperate thing, like he yearns to crack Tenma in two and climb inside just to be closer to him. Tenma closes the last bit of distance between them and folds Johan neatly into his arms. He holds him close around his middle, his other hand cradling the back of Johan’s head, fingers carding through his hair.
“You okay?” he asks after a while. It’s possibly the stupidest question in all of existence, yet one so prevalent in their late-night conversations.
Not necessarily without reason. Johan tends to reach out to Tenma when he isn’t okay, when he’s hurting, when he stumbles into emotionally confusing circumstances he’s never quite learned to deal with—because Tenma makes it better. No one’s ever taught Johan to react in ways that don’t tear his already fragile psyche apart. No one’s ever bothered. He knows right from wrong, certainly, but rarely acts on that intuition. He prefers to check in with Tenma, with Nina, to make sure he doesn’t have it all wrong.
So a stupid question, yes, but as good an icebreaker as any to pierce the idle silence.
When he gets no response, not even a lazy, weary grumble, Tenma ducks down and presses a small kiss to Johan’s temple. He’s cold, always so cold; he prefers sleeping with the window cracked open, even now in the dead of winter, to being holed up in a stuffy, presumably inescapable room.
“Hm?” he prompts.
It takes a little while for Johan to speak. When he finally does, his tone is cautious. Curious yet wary, like a child asking an adult question.
“Do you think someone like me has the capacity to love?”
Tenma blinks, taken aback.
It’s three in the fucking morning. He doesn’t know. How is he to know? How is he supposed to make this better? He sucks in a shallow breath and closes his eyes, hopes that Johan doesn’t feel the way his heart has picked up pace, the way it seizes in pain.
“I think anyone does.” he says softly. Uncomplicated. Placating. Easy enough to understand in Johan’s half-asleep state.
“Even someone like me?”
“Like you?”
“Fucked in the head.”
The blunt crassness of it startles a surprised laugh out of Tenma.
Awkwardly, Johan scoots back just far enough to look him properly in the face. His eyes are puffy and lined with shadows, his lips bitten red, a scab just in the corner from where he’d worried at it until it was raw and bleeding the previous morning.
“Yeah, even fucked in the head,” Tenma assures him. He offers an encouraging smile, the kind that reaches his eyes. Exhausted as he is, he still means it. “If you feel it, you feel it, I think. I mean, who’s to tell you otherwise, right?”
Johan stares at him until it very nearly becomes too unsettling to bear. And then without a word, his frown dissipates and he curls back into the sheets, turning his face almost entirely into his pillow.
It’s a stormy night, snow falling sharp and fast like a volley of arrows. The eerie whistling from outside creeping insidiously through the cracks in the aged windowpanes makes Tenma feel uneasy. The worry that he answered wrong makes him uneasy. He knows very little about love, really, and it makes him uneasy. There’s an invisible hand crushing his heart into powder in its awful grip and he can barely find the strength to breathe.
Johan is quiet for a very long time, long enough for Tenma to believe he’s fallen back asleep. He hasn’t. He bides his time, collects his thoughts. Curls his fingers just a bit tighter in the front of Tenma’s shirt.
“I think I might love you,” he says quietly, suddenly, his whisper swallowed up by the wind.
━━━
There are innumerable things wrong with this picture.
He’s been a legal adult for longer than Johan’s been alive.
While he’s not Johan’s primary doctor, he is a doctor, and he is responsible at least in part for aiding him in his recovery.
Johan is his ward. He has authority over him in the eyes of the law.
And yet.
Johan has done so much evil, left so much death and despair in his wake. He’s ruined countless lives, including Tenma’s own—unknowingly, at first, as a child, then again when he found Tenma all those years later. It was all a game to him. It was all deliberate.
And yet—
Tenma feels guilty sometimes. Not necessarily for pardoning Johan. For forgiving him. It was the kind thing to do, the only choice he could have made. What weighs heavy is the worry that he’s taking advantage of him now, when what he’s been tasked with is helping him heal—because despite his undeniable brilliance, Johan is still so young, so inexperienced and impressionable.
And yet—Tenma can’t help but care.
He can’t help but want.
The thought that he’s being manipulated crosses his mind quite often. Johan is frighteningly good at getting what he wants. They’re silly things, usually: a risqué purchase, the choice of film they watch after dinner, a particular detour when they venture into the forest for lungfuls of fresh air. Inconsequential things, yes, but that makes it no less startling in hindsight to realize that instead of merely asking, offering his opinion, Johan has—whether intentionally or otherwise—made Tenma believe the ideas were all his own.
Still, where others see nothing but darkness, Tenma sees someone who had their childhood stolen. Someone raised by evil, forced to grow up too fast and grow up heartless, someone who had every scrap of kindness and innocence torn violently out. In all likelihood, Tenma thinks, Johan takes instead asking because he was never given a voice unless he snatched the podium out from under the speaker, and even then, the voice was never quite his own.
He’s not the fun kind of charity case either: a good-natured, picture perfect kid taken in by some handsome couple into their loving home. He’s a piece of work, complicated and stubborn and vindictive, as far from sweet and harmless as one can be now that he’s no longer pretending. He’s cruel. He lashes out. People don’t look at him and think: Poor thing, he deserves so much better than this.
He’s a difficult, traumatized child starved for affection, one who does not even realize the full extent of the harm done to him. Blindly, desperately, he reaches out for a taste of intimacy with the very first person to show him kindness like he means to use it to scrub out something from the past. Helpless to stop it, he develops an attachment to said person, the first to stay, to see him as more than a pariah, the first to care about him as more than just the sick fucking symbol he could one day become.
It’s not that Tenma doesn’t know how convoluted the situation is. He knows. He understands exactly how messed up it is that he consents to all of Johan’s fancies. That he makes him tea and kisses his hair instead of letting him rot in a filthy cell for the rest of his life. He knows so completely. But if all it takes is these little things to make Johan just a bit steadier, just the slightest bit happier, that allow him to break free and make his own choices for the first time in far too long, choices that don’t hurt anyone anymore—Tenma’s more than glad to oblige.
If he can play even the smallest role in helping to undo the damage that’s been done, it’ll all be worth it.
And if he loses control of his heart in the process, gives it away to the first person to take him as he is, blemishes and weaknesses and twisted morals and all, so be it.
━━━
He dreams of an old house: the woods creaks and creaks beneath his feet until it gives way and he hurtles down, down, down. There’s someone at the bottom, arms outstretched like they mean to catch him. He can’t tell who it is, just knows from the way fear erupts like spikes in his gut that he doesn’t want it to be them. Not again. He twists mid-air to get away but the ground keeps coming up to meet him. It’s happening too fast. The grotesque hands down below, wrinkled and pale, explode suddenly in a splatter of shredded skin and gore, extending into bloody talons that grow and grow and sharpen and rot—
Tenma wakes to the sound of knocking.
His chest uncomfortably tight, he pushes himself upright on unsteady arms and manages a wheeze of a breath, the last blurry vestiges of the dream already fading.
The alarm clock to his left reads barely a minute past nine in the morning. A muscle twitches in Tenma’s jaw. Only government cronies lack any and all decorum in this way, to intrude upon someone’s personal time before noon on a Sunday. And he does not want to fucking deal with government cronies right now.
Beside him, Johan is comfortably asleep, pale like white gold in the sharp morning sunlight. The last thing Tenma wants is to wake him when he’s like this. He gets so little uninterrupted rest; he should get to sleep in whenever he can.
Yet instead of peace and quiet, Johan gets an urgent jab to the shoulder. Just one—and Tenma waits to see if luck is on his side. He doesn’t want to have to deal with the guilt of dragging him slowly, so slowly into the world of the living.
It does the trick. Johan stirs and grumbles something incoherent, followed immediately by an accusatory,“Kenzo,” his pronunciation practiced and perfect even soaked in exhaustion and annoyance. What do you want, he seems to ask. Fuck off, he demands. His eyes remain stubbornly closed as he burrows deeper beneath the covers like an indignant cat.
Tenma leans down and presses a gentle kiss right where Johan’s brow creases in the center of his forehead, his skin soft and sleep-warm. He’s so lovely in the mornings, imperfect and mussed, silken curls twisting every which way. But there’s no time.
“You need to get up,” Tenma whispers with no small amount of remorse. “Believe me, I would also rather go back to sleep, but we need to get up.”
Reluctantly, Johan’s eyes flutter open. He squints unhappily against the glare of the morning light, rearing back, then blinks irritably when the movement sweeps his hair into his line of sight.
Unable to help himself, Tenma reaches out and brushes it away with the side of his finger, lingering on the pretty sweep of it for a breath too long to be innocuous. It’s a weakness. He’s always liked blondes. Johan knows and greatly enjoys poking fun at him whenever the opportunity arises.
“Pervert,” he says then—adorably predictable.
Tenma matches his serene smile. “Demon.”
He’s a vision; it’s unbelievable at times that he’s real. Even now, especially now, with the skin under his eyes puffy from sleep and creased indents down the side of his cheek from where he flattened himself into his pillow with reckless abandon.
Another burst of noise interrupts the sweet silence, a series of steady staccato knocks against the front door.
In an instant, it all fades, warm blue turning frigid as Johan realizes Tenma’s concern was genuine. He has no choice but to slip into the living room to pretend to be going about his morning, or just down the hall to his own bedroom to feign sleep where he’s supposed to be sleeping. Just a day a like any other. Nothing to see here.
They would risk being separated if it came out. This. This thing. What they’re doing. Tenma’s not entirely sure what it is quite yet, what definition to assign to their familiar touches and easy camaraderie. It would call his integrity into question. He’s brainwashed. He’s biased. He can’t be trusted not to take sides.
And—fair enough, Tenma thinks. He doesn’t think he can be entirely objective anymore. His personal feelings are all mixed up with his professional approach, though he doesn’t necessarily consider that a negative with how things are progressing. A close relationship, someone genuinely in his corner is something that Johan’s needed for a very long time—even if Tenma’s the only one who sees it that way.
With a small sigh, Johan makes to roll off the bed. Tenma catches his wrist before he strays too far and reaches for the lingering smudge of red lipstick just at the corner of his mouth. Can’t have that. Can’t have anyone reading too much into that. With the pad of his thumb he wipes it away, feels Johan’s gaze heavy on him as he does.
“All better?”
“All better.”
Johan drags the entire comforter along with him when he finally swings his legs over the side of the bed, making it abundantly clear that he intends to pull his blinds shut and and go right back to sleep in the comfort of his room.
Tenma follows him out as he waddles down the hall, their footsteps accompanied by another, increasingly insistent round of knocking.
“It’s Anna, you know.”
Tenma blinks at Johan, uncomprehending.
“At the door—it’s Anna.” Gently, Johan taps out the rhythm with perfect accuracy on his doorframe, and smiles. “It’s not the feds. You look like you want to throw a punch as soon as you get the door open, Doctor.”
Choosing to trust Johan’s judgement for the sake of his own sanity, much happier with the thought of seeing Nina than government officials, Tenma breathes a sigh of relief and enters the room after Johan. He collects the covers that Johan kicks immediately to the foot of his bed, curling up instead with the ones he stole from Tenma, and bunches them up in his arms to toss carelessly into his room on his way to the front hall to make his bed look more believably slept-in.
With an endeared smile, he bids Johan goodnight on his way out and gets an indiscernible, sleepy grumble in response.
Even if it’s not the BKA, Tenma reasons, Nina doesn’t know about their thing, either.
There’s a lot they keep from her. The worst of the horror stories, of course: the bad episodes, the side effects, the blood-curdling emptiness that sticks around in Johan’s eyes for hours after his therapist touches on any topic he would much prefer to be left untouched. Nina gets the bare minimum, at Johan’s own insistence. He wants her free from his mess. She never deserved to be a part of it. It was never supposed to be her.
And Tenma’s part of the bargain—she doesn’t learn about what they do behind closed doors. Not yet, not until the details become a bit less foggy. She’s like him, in a way, the type to lose sleep over the morality of things, kind and considerate and far too empathetic for her own good. He wouldn’t wish his turmoil upon anyone, and certainly not upon someone with as much on their plate as Nina has.
She’s glaring daggers when he pulls the front door open, the little crease between her brows so very reminiscent of Johan’s on the rare occasion he doesn’t get what he wants when he wants it.
With a sheepish smile, Tenma invites her inside.
━━━
“Yes, yes, I love you, too.”
Johan jerks away from him and Tenma isn’t entirely sure what to expect when he turns his head and meets his eyes. It’s sudden, the confession, rolling somewhat unintentionally off his tongue in the midst of an unsuspecting conversation. Unintentional, but no less true. He’s made peace with it. Accepted it. Though he probably should have waited for a more opportune moment to let it slip.
Johan’s expression is twisted with concern, eyes wide and so terribly lost.
“What?” Tenma asks. Surprise was to be expected. Confusion, too. But fear—he doesn’t understand that. “What is it?”
Johan shakes his head. And shakes it again and again.
“You—can’t.”
“Can’t what? Why not?”
“You can’t,” Johan insists. You just can’t. Like it’s a silly question. Like he expects Tenma to know why, to know better. That sort of thing.
Softly, Tenma tries again. “Why can’t I?”
Johan stammers through a shaky inhale and grinds his teeth so forcefully Tenma swears he hears them creak.
“You’re good,” he says eventually, forcing it out. And he stops there, settles on that. Just those two small, stubborn words. That’s all there is. “You’re good.”
And I’m not.
The conviction in his voice is unwavering. There’s no self-deprecation, no pity aimed at himself or his circumstances. He’s not looking to be coddled. He’s stating a fact—and in a way, that makes it worse.
“You’re working on it,” Tenma assures him.
Because he is. He doesn’t have to die to atone, for the last remnants of his former existence to be wiped clean off the face of the earth. They’ve been over it. They keep going over it. He doesn’t have to suffer endlessly to fix the damage that’s been done.
“You are not what they made you, remember?”
Johan’s smile is sad—
“How can I not be when I never learned to be anything else?”
—but sad is better than inflectionless. Complicated is better than black and white. It means his gears are turning, that he’s fighting instead of giving into what’s easy or familiar. Every day he fights. And with every ounce of that effort, the past loses power. He deliberately makes the choice, again and again, to take that power away, to snuff out the dark thing that was once put inside of him.
Tenma takes Johan’s hands in his own and squeezes tight.
“You’re working on it,” he repeats.