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Mikoto is in the middle of staring aggressively at his unasked for sketchbook when someone knocks on the door to his cell.
“One sec,” he calls, putting the damned book away. He doesn’t want anyone to see and ask what might be inside; he himself hasn’t managed to look yet. He’s also been squashing down any temptation to pick up a pen or pencil himself.
Mikoto isn’t expecting it to be Shidou waiting for him on the other side of the door. He had anticipated Kazui, perhaps, the older man still concerned from yesterday or perhaps even Es.
But it’s Shidou, smiling almost awkwardly as he stands in the doorway.
“Hello, Mikoto. I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he says.
“Not much to interrupt around here,” Mikoto answers reflexively, stepping aside. “Um. Come in?”
He hopes, as Shidou enters his cell and Mikoto closes the door, that this won’t be a repeat of yesterday in the kitchen.
“I wanted to apologize,” Shidou says almost as soon as the door is shut. “Kazui told me about yesterday—ah, he did not tell me what you talked about, only where I erred.”
“Oh,” Mikoto’s face warms and he rubs at his neck, a bit embarrassed. He still feels a bit as if he’d been overreacting. “It’s fi—”
“It’s not fine,” Shidou says firmly before Mikoto can finish. “I may not be that sort of doctor, but I am a doctor nonetheless, and I am painfully aware of why you might not want to speak to one about such matters. There is also the matter of our friendship.”
Mikoto tries not to wince, especially at the pause before Shidou says friendship.
“Kazui told me you wanted to speak to a friend,” Shidou continues, voice more gentle than firm. “It is so very easy to lose myself in the mindset of professional detachment. I had forgotten that I’m not your doctor. I’m your friend. So…I apologize, Mikoto.”
“...It’s really okay,” Mikoto says when he finds his voice, his neck warm under his clammy palm. “I know you meant well by it and…honestly, I’m a bit more selfish than that. You can probably guess.”
He doesn’t meet Shidou’s gaze, wishing he were sitting down.
“I try to avoid assumptions,” Shidou says after a pause. Mikoto wants to groan into his hands and maybe scream.
“If you treat me like a patient,” he says instead, tone the slightest bit pained, “Then that means I’ve got no chance for anything else.”
He’s never said something like this so straight-forwardly before. It’s far more embarrassing than he ever thought it could be.
“We hardly know each other,” is Shidou’s non-answer. It’s said softly. It isn’t a rejection.
“I know enough,” Mikoto says. He knows how Shidou likes his coffee. He knows that he enjoys flower arrangements, baking, and sweets. He knows Shidou hates himself for something others would, according to Es, forgive him for.
He knows that Shidou hasn’t looked at him as if he is any less after Es and whoever is watching them deemed Mikoto’s crime unforgivable.
“Have I misread?” Mikoto asks after the silence between them drags a moment too long. In the pale light of his cell Shidou looks more like a ghost than ever before, his gaze indecisive, his shoulders slouched with a melancholic weight. His hands tremble at his sides; as he always does when they begin to shake, Shidou hides them behind his back.
Mikoto doesn’t think he misread. He is sociable not by nature but out of necessity; he knows the sort of look Shidou sometimes gives him. It’s the sort of look he gives not just to Shidou but to Kazui. It’s the sort of look Kazui sometimes starts to level at them before he puts on a mask.
“...No,” Shidou admits, wetting his mouth nervously. His arms shift as if he’s wringing his hands out of Mikoto’s sight. “But there is so much you don’t know about me. I don’t deserve to be held in such regard.”
A frown tugs at Mikoto’s lips.
“It’s not about what you deserve,” he says, swallowing back nausea. “Or about worth. Personally, I don’t consider you a bad person, no matter what you might be thinking about yourself. And…I want to learn about the things I don’t know yet, too. Even if there are things I won’t like, I’ll still like you.”
Shidou’s washed-out pallor means any color stands out starkly. Mikoto stares, endeared by the splotchy blush that creeps down Shidou’s pale neck.
“You…are you usually so bold?” Shidou asks, sounding as embarrassed as Mikoto had felt to say such things.
“No way. I just needed to get my point across.” If Mikoto were always so shamelessly bold, he wouldn’t feel so flustered by his own behavior right now.
Then, before Shidou can say anything else, Mikoto says, “If Es is right…if I really did murder someone, will that change how you think of me?”
For a moment Shidou looks at him. He doesn’t comment on the pause before Mikoto had said think of—they both know the words he hesitated over.
“No,” Shidou murmurs, a soft confession as he closes his eyes and unclasps his hands from behind him. They still tremble when they fall to his sides. “It wouldn’t.”
They don’t speak of the lack of context for what Mikoto might have done. He doesn’t remember; he doesn’t know if he will ever remember, just as he doesn’t know if he will ever remember what he might have needed protecting from in middle school.
Mikoto wonders: if his reasons are lacking, will Shidou’s statement become untrue? But he stops that thought before it can consume him.
“Then you get it, right?” Mikoto asks. “I’ll still like you.”
“Is there any good in acknowledging such things in these circumstances?” Shidou asks in turn, but he sounds and looks resigned. “Outside of this place, I doubt you would have spared me a glance.”
Mikoto grimaces at the reminder of their situation, though it isn’t as if he can ever forget.
“I like making the most of even the worst situations,” he says. There’s a lot more he could say about that, but it can wait. “And besides, I should be saying that to you, Kirisaki-sensei.” After all, what is Mikoto—an art school graduate in a design company—next to a medical professional?
It’s also the first time he’s called Shidou so formally since their initial meeting. He makes a face at the form of address.
“Stick to my given name. We’ve established that I’m not your doctor.”
That makes Mikoto smile.
“Shidou,” he says then, just to say it. He doesn’t use san the way he usually does when addressing the man directly; he gets a look for it, but Shidou is smiling too, if barely.
“Mikoto,” he says back, almost teasing, leaving Mikoto tempted to abandon dignity to flop onto his sorry excuse for a bed and scream into the pillow.
“I am a doctor, though,” Shidou continues after a beat, “And I stopped here on my way to check on Shiina-kun. I tended to Kajiyama-kun earlier.”
Mikoto wilts a bit, thinking of Kajiyama’s haunted face and Mahiru’s sorry excuse for a smile when he had seen her before, her once healthy complexion having gone sickly, her eyes sunken and her hair matted with blood. She hasn’t let Shidou cut it for her.
“I hate this,” he mutters. What had been the point of such violence? If Shidou weren’t a doctor…Mikoto doesn’t even want to think about it. Glancing down at Shidou’s hands, which have mostly calmed their tremors, he gestures.
“Can I…?”
Eyebrows raised, Shidou holds out one of his gloved hands as Mikoto moves closer. He takes it in his own; the fabric is thick and heavy, the sort of glove designed with a condition like Shidou’s in mind. His fingers twitch in Mikoto’s loose hold.
He lifts Shidou’s hand. His sleeve slips back to expose a pale wrist and the edge of a surgical scar along the edge of his forearm. Mikoto wonders how far it goes.
He doesn’t ask. He presses his mouth to the pulse of Shidou’s wrist.
“We’ll have opportunities to talk,” Mikoto says before he lowers Shidou’s hand. “We’re not going anywhere, after all. Tell Mappi I’ll visit later, okay?”
Shidou looks at him in a way Mikoto could not hope to articulate. As Mikoto lets go of his hand, he sucks in a tremulous breath.
“Okay,” Shidou says as Mikoto wonders what he could be thinking. And then, as he starts to turn, he pauses and adds, “Kazui thinks you’re joking with him.”
“He thinks you’re joking, too,” Mikoto returns immediately. “Are you?”
He’s not. Neither of them have been joking.
“No,” Shidou confirms, “I’m not.” Before he turns away his expression is the same as it had been when he said no, it wouldn’t about Mikoto’s murder. Something heavy and resigned.
