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The door to Eiden’s room is flung open and it slams shut as a hurried figure rushes in, grey hair messy and stuck to his face with sweat. Eiden can’t even check the time before Rei is on top of him, straddling his lap and looking directly into his eyes.
“Eiden. I know you already know what I want. I’m not going to beg you for it, but please.”
Grey eyes bore into his soul and Eiden has to pause, has to put his hands up and push Rei’s body gently away from him so he can take a moment and breathe.
“Slow down, would you?”
“I can’t- I.. Eiden, please. I don’t want to beg.” Rei’s voice is breathless as his eyes, wild and searching, jump around the features on Eiden’s face, not stopping, not calm. “I know.. I know you can feel my essence—just, please. Don’t say anything. Don’t be slow. I need this, okay?”
The words fall out of his mouth carelessly, not calculated, just desperate. His lip trembles slightly as he finishes his question.
Eiden wants to agree, he wants to give Rei what he wants. He knows that if he pushes too hard, gets too worried, Rei will just shut him out and run away like he always does. But Eiden can’t just fold to desire when what Rei clearly needs is help.
“Rei, stop. Look at me. What’s wrong?”
“I told you, my essence is fucking itself over again. So I need you to-“
“Why?”
“Why what? Why is it fucked? God, if I knew I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“I’m not stupid, Rei. Something’s up. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s- Nothing’s wrong, Eiden. My body is working against me in the same damn way it always does. What more do you need to know?”
“That.. I can tell it isn’t just that, okay?”
Rei’s jaw clenches, his expression hardening. His piercing grey eyes are no longer looking at Eiden, instead they’re focused on his hands, fidgeting on Eiden’s stomach. “It’s nothing, okay? If you’re not going to give me what I need, I’m going to go.”
“It’s not that, Rei. If that was what you actually needed, then I’d be happy to give it to you. But it clearly isn’t.”
“How the fuck would you know what I need?” The grey haired man spat, venom dripping from each word.
“Sure. You’re right. But I can at the very least tell that something’s not right. For one, you’re lashing out, for two, you’re literally shaking, and for three, despite all your begging, you’re not hard and you’re clearly not at all horny. So no, sex isn’t what you ”need”, Rei”, Eiden looked piercingly at Rei’s downturned head, sarcastic quotation marks obvious in his speech.
“For fuck’s sake, Eiden”, Rei’s tone mimicked the former’s previous, and he sneered as the words exited his mouth. “Just..”
“Just what? Give you something you don’t actually want and make you feel worse? If you don’t want to tell me what’s up, that’s fine, but I’m not going to fuck you, not when you’re clearly too unstable to tell me what you’re really asking for.”
“Why the hell does this have to be the one time you’re not thinking with your dick? I’m right here, on top of you, handing myself over to you, I don’t- What else do you want me to do?” Rei’s voice sounded smaller, like it was going to break. His eyes still weren’t looking at Eiden’s, but his body had slumped, and he looked a lot weaker than he had when he’d rushed into the bedroom, manic energy all around.
“I’m not going to keep asking you the same question, alright? What I am going to do is lay here, and you can decide what you want to do. The door is open if you want to leave, but my ears are also open if you have something you want to say, or get off your chest, okay?”
Rei went quiet. His body, previously only quivering slightly at the ends of his limbs was now shaking completely, the tremors like a leaf trying to cling on desperately in a full-force gale.
He blinked, twice, Eiden watched, but he still didn’t meet the brunette’s eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched, breathing more ragged than it had been before.
“I don’t know, Eiden.”
It was like the world had stilled, all of the anxious tension evaporating out of the room.
“I don’t know what I want, okay? I just”, Rei’s voice quaked as his eyes moved everywhere around Eiden’s torso, “I need- I need a distraction, I need something that isn’t..”
“Isn’t what?”
“These fucking–, These memories, I don’t, I don’t..” Rei’s body was trembling, and it felt like his arms would stop supporting him at any moment.
Eiden paused, before asking softly, “Is it alright if I hug you?”
A small nod from the other man was all he needed before he embraced the other tightly. Only a moment after did he feel the warm tears running their way down his back, Rei’s body trembling with silent sobs.
Eiden’s hand made it’s way up and down the shaking curve of Rei’s back, warm and confident and comforting.
“I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want these memories or these emotions, I don’t.. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t want to be there or have them near me or have them do anything like that to me, it’s not.. it’s not fair”, Rei’s voice was completely broken up by this point, every second word interrupted by a shaky breath or hiccup as he tried to get his messy, incoherent words out. Eiden nodded against his shoulder.
“She, she would have been so upset, I can’t have her being upset, I don’t want her to be sad but I don’t know how much stronger I can.. I can be”.
Eiden kept his hand moving, kept nodding, kept doing his best to stay an anchor for Rei’s rambles. Did his best to listen to the words that were tumbling from the other’s mouth.
“I’m in so much pain, it hurts, so much. It’s so unfair, I didn’t ask for this. I hate feeling their hands on my body, I’m so disgusted and I..” Rei’s voice trailed off with finality as he sobbed quietly into Eiden’s shirt, nose and eyes running as he let his body be overtaken with sobs, wracking his whole being.
“You’re alright, Rei. You’re safe. They can’t touch you here, okay?” Eiden murmered to the other man, heart pounding furiously as he tried to piece together the snippets of what Rei had just told him together.
He knew the other man’s past was tough, he knew that all of the clan members had been through a lot. But Rei never talked about it, never made passing comment or joke, just steered the conversation far, far away whenever the idea was being broached.
He understood, of course, it was hard to open up to anyone after having lived such an extensive part of your life on the run, untrusting of everyone in sight, but in Rei’s case, he wanted him to trust him with his past. He wanted him to know that really, he did care.
“Rei, do you want to stay here tonight? I won’t leave, I’ll be here until after you wake up, but if you don’t want to, that’s okay too.”
The silence stretched thickly through the room as he imagined the cogs in Rei’s brain turning, mechanical sounds processing each thought.
“..Sure. I’ll stay.”
And with that, their drawn out hug was over, Rei’s hands reaching up to wipe the wet tears from his face as he turned away from Eiden, not letting the other man catch even a glimpse of his puffy, red eyes.
Eiden smiled subtly, but pulled the blanket off himself and moved as far to the right as he could to make way for Rei. The grey-haired man said nothing as he crawled his way underneath the bedsheets, body slotted beside Eiden’s, and, despite turning away when Eiden turned over to face him, didn’t move when their limbs intertwined, warmth being shared between the two.
When Eiden woke up in the morning, Rei was gone. But in his place was a feather that was clearly Father’s, and letter, bound tightly with ribbon and sealed with a wax stamp that looked far too elegant to be something the scientist had created.
Despite that, when Eiden opened the letter, he was met with the scrawling handwriting that only the sarcastic, owlish man could pen.
Eiden,
I’m sorry you had to see that. Apologies aren’t things I say, nor write, very often, but my display of emotion wasn’t very in character for me, so I feel like I should tell you that I didn’t intend to worry you. That having been said,
Thank you for comforting me and inviting me to stay last night. I don’t know what I was really thinking, nor what I said, my memory is relatively blurry, but I know that you kept me warm and you made me feel safe. So, thanks for that.
I won’t ever acknowledge this happened again, and for your sake, you shouldn’t either.
- Rei
P.S. Yakumo was scared half to death when I opened the door instead of you this morning. He said that there’s pancakes on the kitchen for you when you wake up.
Eiden smiled, folding the letter over and stretching as he got up for the day.
Even though the next time he saw Rei, all he was met with was the all-knowing, smarmy smirk that the grey haired man typically wore, he felt the warmth beneath it.
And then he thought back to the letter, and the man who wrote it, and he felt an uncontrollable grin spread to his face. One day, Rei would open up to him fully. Until that day came, Eiden would be standing by his side, supporting him and participating in whatever weird experiments he was dragged into.
Besides, isn’t that what being the clan leader was all about?