Archive of Our Own

There were good days and bad days.

(Bad days with slivers of good, really.)

There were small smiles in the student council room and a mound of relief on his chest every time he saw Kou-- living, breathing alive. Teru got to look around and see the world he’d always lived in, instead of a fake, cruel version that could have been yanked away any moment.

Their old problems weren’t fixed, not at all, but at the very least, this was his life.

Teru didn’t bounce his leg, because he’d never been one to fidget needlessly. He was above that. He didn’t tap his finger against his desk, nor did he thumb at the clip of his pen. He most definitely wasn’t zoning out.

These were all things Teru Minamoto was above. He’d been trained out of them before he even understood why they could indicate weakness, before he understood why a Minamoto absolutely could not be weak. He kept himself still as a rock, all of his focus stuck on keeping his heavy limbs in place, rather than on the student council paperwork before him.

There was a snap in front of him, and Teru’s finger went under the clip of the pen as he looked up with pursed lips.

There were bad days, with small good moments splattered in between. This had always been true about his life. Ever since he picked up a sword, ever since he stood before an open casket, Teru walked through life and held onto the rare good things with both hands.

At some point in the last year, he’d begun valuing student council wholeheartedly. He didn’t even notice when he began to look forward to attending at the end of the day, when his nightly patrols dragged too long and he found himself wondering how he could piss off Aoi best. It became normal, comfortable, and a good thing outside of his own home.

Then, the world was turned upside down, and most days, the feeling was amplified to the highest degree.

Some days, though, when the image of Kou’s dead body was less vivid every time he blinked, or when he wasn’t afraid to walk into his kitchen… he found himself furious at Aoi.

A lot had happened in that other world-- and a lot had happened in the Clock Keeper’s boundary before they ever got there. There wasn’t time to process any of it, not before everything warped into something new and changed. Teru was dragged on a date with Akane of all people, and then they were in the red house, and that awful feeling curdled in his stomach up until he found the reason for it with Kou dead--

There was another snap in front of him, “Minamoto!”

Sometimes, when the other horrible things they’d all experienced weakened as much as they could, Teru remembered the cold feeling of betrayal. He remembered smiling fondly at a Clock Keeper’s familiar, rather than raising his sword to it, because he trusted that Aoi wouldn’t let anything bad happen. Before he could even process it, there had been confusing, cold words, spoken like they were straight out of his father’s stories of evil supernaturals. A gavel slammed against his back, and the strength seeped out of him, cold spreading into his limbs.

Above the cold, beyond the alarms going off in his head, Teru had felt terribly betrayed. He’d thought for a moment, a brief, passing moment, that maybe, just maybe, his father’s cruel words weren’t the absolute truth of the universe. He would never like supernaturals, but maybe he could tolerate a specific one, if only because the blood was still pumping in his veins.

It wasn’t much, not enough for him to agree with Kou or relinquish his duty in the slightest, but it was more than he’d had in his entire life. It was the most freedom he’d ever given his thoughts.

Aoi had smashed all of it with a gavel against his spine.

“What?” He snapped, picking up his pen and returning to his paperwork.

When his persistent lack of sleep didn’t make him feel tired anymore and the image of Kou’s dead body was too blurry to make out when he blinked, Teru grew angry at Aoi. A lot had happened, overshadowing the betrayal, but it blinked through when he least expected it.

Just yesterday Aoi had taken over paperwork while Teru slumped on his desk, refusing to close his eyes and see Kou’s dead body on his eyelids again, but on his third day without sleep and unable to read the paperwork.

Today, Teru was angry.

“Sheesh,” Aoi muttered like a curse, scowling. “What’s wrong with you today?”

What’s wrong? Teru was beginning to grow a spine of his own, morals forming along with it, separate from the ones that had been beaten into him from birth, and Aoi had shattered it with one order from the clock keepers. He could have talked Teru into it, hell, he was so damned trusting he might have actually listened. Instead, he spoke ominously while Teru walked comfortably, nearly at ease by his side, and destroyed all of that spine he’d nearly been proud of growing.

That was what was wrong. But, Teru had never been one to talk about his feelings. Not before, not when he trusted Aoi, and sure as hell not after.

(He still trusted him, though. He couldn’t deny it. Aoi was the one person who knew what Teru saw every time he shut his eyes. Teru desperately wished that he’d shattered his trust and their relationship along with his spine, but the pieces hadn’t fallen that way-- not in the wake of the other world.)

“Nothing,” he bit off, clicking his pen as his leg began to bounce against his will.

Teru had never been one to fidget before. Somehow, the other world had changed that. He watched Aoi catch the movement, even if his lips twisted in a scowl and his eyes narrowed.

“Fine, then,” he huffed, turning to his own paperwork.

Against his will, Teru remembered the exact moment they’d begun sitting at these desks. Teru was beside the window, with Aoi right in front of him, chair tilted with its back to the wall so he could easily look at Teru. He remembered when he began doing that, too.

Originally, Teru sat on one side of the room, with Aoi on the other. It was the seats they’d adopted when they were both on the middle school committee. Teru continued it when he got to highschool and joined student council, valuing the vantage point of the door and everyone around him that his seat gave him. It only made sense that Aoi did the same when he also joined student council.

Then, there were dozens of afternoons sitting in the room alone as they struggled to catch up with paperwork that the other members had left them to do alone. At some point, Aoi got tired of yelling across the room and would simply walk over. Teru kicked a chair out for him after his refusal to sit became obnoxious.

He didn’t remember when Aoi stopped sitting at his old desk altogether, even before their meetings ended. It only took a few days before he began turning his chair to face outward, allowing him to write on either his desk or Teru’s with ease.

Right now, he was writing on his own desk. Teru was thankful.

He willed his leg to stop bouncing and went back to his work. A few peaceful minutes ticked by, until Teru realized one hand was fiddling with his sleeve and his leg was bouncing again. His shoelace was clicking against the floor, giving it away to anyone without even looking at him.

His eyes flicked up to the back of Aoi’s head, working peacefully. Teru’s eyes burned holes into his back, adjacent to where the gavel had slammed into his skin.

Beyond all of the anger, Teru felt… stupid. He knew better than to trust supernaturals. He knew from the moment he met Aoi that, as much as he disdained supernaturals himself, he couldn’t be trusted. He treated him like the insolent being that he was, and he cursed every time he realized Aoi had bent time to his will. He was everything in the world that Teru was forced to spend his life fighting, and he held a great disdain for the creatures that bound his hands even as he slaughtered them.

He wasn’t sure when his harsh treatment of Aoi became playful, and when his insults became more like taunts that were meant to elicit a certain response. It had happened completely beyond his control, and he’d fallen right into it like a fool. He made no effort to hit the breaks, even confiding in Aoi back in the shrine or beneath the quiet sunset once the hallways at school had emptied.

For some reason beyond his understanding, he really had grown to trust Aoi.

It went even deeper than that.

Teru was already too kind to the mokke for Tiara’s sake, but he stopped glaring at the ones that jumped into Aoi’s lap. He once admitted that he found them cute, and there was technically no need to scare them away. He was too lenient with the wonders because of Kou’s fickle dynamic with them, which lured him into a habit of being lenient with Aoi, too. Somehow, his trust for one person made him relax around supernaturals, something he’d sworn to never do.

He remembered when he saw the Clock Keeper’s Familiar, as it delivered the message to betray him. Instead of disgust curdling in his stomach or the need to pull at his sword, he’d crouched to get a closer look, fascinated to learn more about the Boundary that Aoi had been thrust into against his will and was now so comfortable with.

It was the first time in his life that he’d seen a supernatural without feeling the instinct to destroy. No matter what he told himself, it was because of Aoi. He grew to trust a single soul outside of his own family, a feat that he couldn’t speak to at any other point in his entire life, and it thrust his entire worldview on his side.

It could’ve been revolutionary for him. It could’ve helped him become a real person, not simply the sword-wielding husk that he really was, even if he never allowed himself to think about it. A real friendship could have been forged, something that Teru had always been a spectator of.

He wondered where his mind would have gone, when it came to supernaturals. What could have happened, if that gavel didn’t hit his back seconds after he showed awe, rather than disgust, to the Clock Keeper’s owl.

He wasn’t given a chance.

Then, the other world had happened, and Kou died, and the betrayal was an afterthought.

Teru remembered. He remembered his awe when he saw the owl and the immediate instincts that unfurled within him when the gavel hit his back, his father’s voice ringing in the tune of I told you so as if he’d ever given him a reason to say that before. He’d pulled his sword and swung, training coming back without a single care of who he was slashing at. His father’s voice played on a loop in his head, and Teru had never felt like a bigger fool.

The feeling of losing his strength was sickening, and it reminded him of everything his father had ever taught him. It made him think of everytime hate curled within him, aimed at his father and his inability to be such a thing.

The trial, Aoi’s collar bunched in his palm, and the gruesome reality of the other world… all of it was a reflection of what supernaturals could do. It was exactly what he should have been keeping an eye on this entire time.

When the gavel hit his back, Teru was reverted into the exorcist that he would always be, through and through.

For some godforsaken reason, though, he still trusted Aoi. He still nearly fell asleep at his desk with only Aoi in front of him, and he still admitted that he saw Kou’s dead body every time he so much as blinked. Aoi still sat with him every afternoon, even after the betrayal, the only difference in their dynamic the fact that they’d both become too damaged to hold everything in anymore.

It hadn’t been personal, but to Teru, it couldn’t have been anything but. He trusted someone outside of his family for the first time, and he looked at a supernatural with something other than disgust for the first time.

If he stepped back, he could see that it was simply bad timing. If he listened to his father’s voice in the back of his head, he’d leave Aoi behind and make sure he couldn’t work on the student council anymore.

Teru didn’t listen to any of it, and instead focused on the bitter hurt that he scarcely allowed others to inflict upon him.

“You’re zoning out again.”

His lips twitched into a scowl.

“What makes you think that?”

“Do I seriously need to explain?”

Aoi had his back to the wall again, given the option between writing on Teru’s desk or his own. Teru didn’t move his arms away, taking up all of the space from the paperwork he absolutely was not getting done.

He’d been mad a few other times. It had been weeks since they were brought back from the other world, after all. Of course he’d thought about it.

Those days, though, he didn’t have to face Aoi.

Aoi snatched Teru’s paper from beneath his arm and looked at it, leaning away when Teru tried to take it back. The paper crinkled with his failed attempt. His weight remained on his arm as he leaned over his desk, waiting for Aoi to return the paper once he’d read what he wanted to.

It was only a moment before Aoi turned to him, paper still out of reach, with an absolutely incredulous look on his face.

“You’ve barely done anything?”

Teru’s irritation grew deeper, “I’m taking care of it-”

In his anger, he’d halfway hoped to piss Aoi off, too. It would make him stop being so damned nice, even after he’d absolutely stabbed Teru in the back. Much to his horror, the opposite happened as Aoi’s eyebrows bent inward and his scowl faded.

“Have you still not slept? Or is it-”

Teru leaned forward and snatched the paper back, crinkling it even more as he slammed it back onto his desk.

“I already told you, it’s nothing.”

He’d gotten about an hour of sleep the night prior, plagued by nightmares of a world where his brother was dead. That wasn’t Aoi’s business, not when he was so irritated with him. He was angry, he was pissed, and somewhere in the cage that Teru kept locked away, he was hurt.

He picked up his pen, clicked it on and off, and signed the paper. He set it on the desk they moved close to them for their completed pile of paperwork and grabbed a new sheet.

Aoi was still staring at him, but the sympathy was fading away.

“Wait, are you actually mad at me?”

Yes. Yes, I’m angry my father was right, I’m angry you didn’t see I was beginning to care, I’m angry that you actually hurt me.

“Just do your work so we can get out of here faster,” he muttered, shaking his head to himself as his leg began to bounce again.

Aoi did not turn back to his work. He continued staring at Teru like he was the main attraction at a circus all for having some damned feelings that he desperately wanted to put back in a box. The more Aoi stared, the more furious he got, because this was all his fault in the first place. If he’d let Teru in on the plan, actually talked to him like a living human being would, he wouldn’t feel this way.

Instead, he went the supernatural route, and Teru had to pay for it. It wasn’t just because he had to go through the trial, but it was the closest thing he’d ever gotten to a friend, suddenly betraying him. It was a worldview shifting friendship that was suddenly forever altered, stopping Teru from changing with it.

He was mad. His silence was petty, but that wasn’t something Teru was ever allowed to be, and right now, Aoi deserved it.

Aoi turned to face his desk properly, “You’re seriously mad at me? What did I do?”

Teru wasn’t sure how he could even figure that much out. He wasn’t sure when Aoi began to know him at all, let alone enough to see exactly what his problem was. He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He’d been seeing through Teru for weeks. Hell, even in that godforsaken red house, he dully remembered Aoi asking him questions in his low, inquisitive voice that always indicated he cared.

Of course, the one person who he let get close to him outside of his own family was a man who cared about others more than Teru could ever comprehend.

He shook his head, signing the paperwork with a harshness that indicated anger. He felt Aoi’s eyes boring holes into his forehead, his eyes concealed by his overgrown bangs, but he didn’t look up.

Ten seconds that Aoi always felt tick by passed before the pen was snatched out of his hand. Once again, he lunged forward to take it back, but Aoi threw it on the floor in response.

They stared at each other. Aoi looked pathetically at the pen, obviously having thrown it without thinking about how petulant the action was. It wasn’t long before brown eyes were back on him, though, two palms planting onto the front of Teru’s desk. He leaned back to avoid contact.

“I can’t fix it if you don’t talk to me about it.”

Talk about it. Teru could have laughed. Aoi saw him and Kou after their argument, he’d been in their home before. He knew that Minamoto’s didn’t talk, let alone Teru.

He rose to stand to get the pen back, but was stopped by a palm wrapping around his elbow. This time, Aoi was the one leaning over his desk. His anger was gone, still visible in a thin irritation, but he was much more concerned.

“I’m serious, Pres.”

Teru looked at him, and then at the hand around his elbow. He wanted to yank his arm away. Aoi didn’t deserve any talking, not when he was a supernatural. Supernaturals weren’t to be trusted. Teru learned that lesson in the most literal way possible, seconds after he’d decided that maybe, just maybe, his father was as harsh to humans as he was to supernaturals; it was something Teru never wanted to be.

He slumped into his chair and pulled his arm away, less harsh than he wanted, for some foolish reason. Aoi shifted in his chair, his lips upturning slightly. Teru couldn’t possibly fathom why.

“Is the Teru Minamoto really being petty right now?”

Teru frowned. He knew what Aoi was doing, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like that it showed just how well he knew him. People weren’t supposed to know Teru, not with the responsibility he had-- particularly not a half-supernatural himself.

That was the crux of the matter, he supposed. He bent the rules all for Aoi, and he’d learned exactly why the rules existed in the first place.

He didn’t want to believe that. Not when Aoi was smiling, trying to tease him into comfort, but had plenty of concern in his big, brown eyes.

He remembered the age old instincts that thrummed beneath his skin when the gavel hit his spine.

“Just- focus.”

He grabbed a new pen out of his backpack.

Teru didn’t do emotions. He could be mad at Aoi all that he wanted, considering the scale of what he’d done-- even if Aoi didn’t even remember the incident. He wouldn’t, not when Teru had never brought it up again.

Aoi stared at him for a long while, but eventually, he relented with a sigh. He turned back to his desk and picked up his own pen. Teru’s leg went back to bouncing, and he resolved to let it so that he could actually get something done.

The silence in the room was heavier than it ever was. At some point, silence became a comfort, but not in the way that it helped Teru avoid conversation. Miraculously, he didn’t mind talking to Aoi, not at all. He liked teasing him, he liked pissing him off, and he didn’t mind when Aoi did it back. Sometimes, after they were all out of insults, one of them would begin talking about the randomest of topics. Teru knew about Akane’s garden and Aoi knew that there used to be a garden in his own yard-- although, not that it was his mother’s. Akane talked about how stressed he was for exams, and Teru raved about Kou’s cooking.

Somewhere between it all, comfortable silence would fall, and it felt a little something like being at home.

This was not comfortable.

It was cold and bitter, like the feeling beneath his skin after the gavel hit his spine. It glared with the anger he’d felt that day in the boundary, securely hiding the absolute hurt that blossomed in the heart he didn’t know he had.

Teru wished for time to pass, faster and faster. When Aoi finished his stack, he was relieved, as Aoi would finally leave the room. Instead, he took some of the papers off of Teru’s, stealing a long look at him in the process. Teru didn’t dare look up.

He was angry. He was being an asshole. By all accounts, Aoi should have left him all on his own. He’d finished his own work, already having more than half of the total paperwork due to bad luck.

He was helping Teru, though. Even when he was being an asshole. Even when he didn’t even want Aoi’s help, because he’d betrayed him in every way that nobody knew was significant.

Teru didn’t look up.

They finished their papers at the same time, Teru’s sleep-deprived mind slower than Aoi’s. They packed in silence, the sun beginning to set outside as the halls cleared of students.

After the severance, Aoi and Akane had stopped walking home together everyday. They both inconvenienced themselves to get to the gates together, previously, all for a walk in silence. It only made sense that they’d stopped pushing for such a thing, Aoi allowing Akane to have her privacy and accepting it happily when they still sought each other out.

Without speaking a word about it, Teru had taken her place.

He didn’t know what that meant.

He didn’t think about what it meant, not when that came with more feelings that he couldn’t handle. He’d trusted Aoi, a stubborn thing that wouldn’t go away, and he’d paid for it. Yet, he still cared for him, and he still found his heart beating a little too fast when he least expected it.

Teru wasn’t one for emotions. Aoi, with a heart as big as the sun, didn’t deserve to deal with Teru and his emotional constipation. He never thought about what walking home together nearly daily could mean, not until he felt the cold silence around them as they stepped past the school gates.

With a pathetic droop of his shoulders that Teru hoped Aoi wouldn’t notice, he asked himself why he couldn’t simply stop trusting him. He wished that he could.

He was still angry. He’d probably always be a little angry, the cold blood of his father always running through his veins. More so, though, Teru felt a little pathetic. He never thought he would hate silence so much; he’d grown so accustomed to he and Aoi’s comfortable, natural chatter that he didn’t realize how much he’d miss it until it was gone.

“I’m angry at you.”

There was a joke Aoi could have made. If he was as evil as Teru wanted to believe, he would’ve. Some sort of sarcastic remark, or perhaps the same stony silence Teru had been giving him all day.

Brown eyes landed on Teru, alert and wide. There was no noise, but the silence dissipated back into comfort. Aoi’s keychains bounced against his backpack, contrasted by Teru’s singular lobster keychain. Slowly, Teru looked at Aoi.

He really did care about him. He wanted to be furious about the boundary, but it wasn’t as if he ever talked about his feelings enough for Aoi to know how much it hurt him.

“For what you did in the boundary,” he said, maintaining eye contact as they walked.

Aoi’s eyes widened, understanding sparking as his mouth opened. Teru had threatened him after, once the world was turned upside down, but he didn’t let out his own upset. It was probably hard to focus on when a whole new world was blossoming around them.

“Oh.”

Teru was deeply uncomfortable, picking at his finger in a way that exorcists weren’t supposed to do. He really didn’t want to talk about it, but the silence was worse. Aoi cared. Aoi really, really cared, and Teru wanted to talk to him.

He looked forward, swallowing. He felt like his chest cavity had been opened for all to see, beating heart on display.

“You should have told me what the clock keepers wanted. I would have listened, eventually.”

The seconds that ticked by without a response made Teru want to pull out his sword all over again. He’d trusted him, he’d trusted supernaturals, and Aoi shattered it all. He’d been a person for once in his life, opening up to certain supernaturals on the virtue of trusting the humans around them, and Aoi had snatched the ability away in an instant.

He heard Aoi swallow, brown eyes still stuck on him. They were getting close to the intersection that separated their houses down different streets.

“At the time, I felt like it was all I could do,” he sighed, and Teru tensed, defenses going up. “But I can see how I quite literally stabbed you in the back.”

Teru’s jaw clenched as he looked over at Aoi without turning his head to him, holding eye contact as if he was going to do it all over again. He should have been earning back his trust, but somehow, Teru never stopped trusting him. Why didn’t he stop trusting him?

“You should have told me about the clock keeper’s plans.”

Aoi’s forehead wrinkled immediately, but it quickly smoothed out. It had been weeks, after all. Teru was digging up old, unnecessary wounds, all because he dared to have a heart. He wanted it to stop. It was embarrassing, and he suddenly regretted acting the way he had at all. He was angry, but he could’ve kept it quiet.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, really. It was a mistake, on my part,” Aoi’s fidgeting came to a pause, movements slightly stilted. “Has it been bugging you all this time?”

Teru frowned, unwilling to make eye contact. He wanted to hit the brakes and take ten steps back. He was being too understanding, more so than anyone ever was to Teru. He was the fool for trusting him in the first place.

“I get mad about it sometimes, but not really, considering everything else. I’m still mad at you, now.”

He saw Aoi nod in his peripheral vision.

“I understand. If I’m being honest, I forgot about it, with everything that followed. But I do remember how mad you were. I guess I did exactly what you expect from supernaturals, huh?”

His voice darkened as he realized it, their shared hatred of supernaturals hitting a wall. Teru wanted to pull his hair out, suddenly realizing that he was so much more hurt than anger. His anger in the aftermath had been a defense mechanism, his father’s voice cheering him on. It was all driven by just how much Aoi had hurt him.

“Yeah, you did,” he said, his tongue heavy like lead.

The silence was even worse, even thicker, as Aoi stared at him. That had to be all there was to it. Teru didn’t talk about his emotions.

“What else is it? I can tell there’s something.”

Emotions were weak, trust was weak, and smiling in the face of a supernatural was downright foolish. Such were all things his father would tell him.

Teru thought of Kou, with his supernatural friends and easily earned trust. He made friends easily, having a social ability that Teru never even tried to have. He’d called him weak, shortly before he died the events of the other world, but he didn’t mean it the way he thought. To Teru, Kou’s emotional abilities made him strong, stronger than he could ever hope to be. It made him weak in the face of danger, of supernaturals, but that hierarchy wasn’t one Kou deserved to suffer in.

Their father never dared call Kou weak, not to Teru, but he knew the sentiment was there. It was part of why he despised him so deeply.

He battled with the dichotomy of his father’s words and his absolute disdain for his father before throwing the debate out of his mind and stomping it out. He was tired, an exhaustion that settled into his bones before he ever found a person to trust.

“I don’t trust easily.”

The four words were quiet, lacking the venom that he wished he put into them. Just speaking the words out loud said enough.

Aoi paused, and Teru realized they were at the break in their walks home. He turned to face him, left with no other choice. Aoi’s eyebrows were drawn together the way they did when he was focused on schoolwork, or as he ran around the courtyard trying to help every person in need.

Teru felt the urge to explain, to vomit up words until there was nothing left to possibly say, but it wasn’t needed. He’d said plenty, considering who he was, and just how well Aoi knew him.

“I’m sorry,” Aoi said, the words striking something into Teru’s heart.

Kou apologized every time he didn’t need to. Tiara didn’t apologize enough. Teru didn’t think he’d ever heard an apology from his father, not to anyone, but especially not to him.

Aoi looked up at the sky, fiddling with the zipper of his jacket, “I knew that. I should’ve thought twice before betraying you like that, and I would’ve talked to you if I did. I’m sorry.”

Only once the words were done did he look back at Teru. He wasn’t waiting for acceptance, a frown tugging at his lips as he realized that he really had upset Teru. It was simply words that he had to let out, even if he didn’t expect Teru to be over it immediately.

“What can I do to earn back that trust?”

As far as apologies went, Teru was willing to bet it was a pretty damned good one. There was no disregardance, absolutely no irritation or brushing past it. Aoi understood in a way that no one else ever did.

It was for that reason that Teru smiled wryly at Aoi’s question. He trusted him, a thing that he didn’t do easily, and not even the absolute betrayal had broken it. He still left the mokke that flocked to Aoi alone, and he’d probably greet another Familiar of Aoi’s with a smile, now that they’d talked about it. Every day since they returned from the other world, Aoi had proved why Teru could still trust him.

If he could trust Aoi, then he could trust the supernaturals around him. He hadn’t shattered the changing worldview. It was certainly put on pause, old wounds suddenly open, but talking it out made Teru feel a thousand times lighter.

Just by being himself, Aoi had already earned back his trust.

“I think you’ll be alright,” he said, softer than he should have. “Thank you.”

It did still hurt, but it was inconsequential compared to Aoi at his side.

Aoi’s forehead wrinkled with confusion.

Teru looked at the setting sun, and then the road down to his house.

“Do you have homework?” He asked, the way they did on their walk home most of the time.

Aoi smiled, “Sure do.”

They headed in the direction of Teru’s house without another word. Aoi knew it had to be his house, because seeing Kou would quell the nerves that he didn’t even notice had risen throughout the day. It was an unhealthy habit, but he didn’t know how to fix it considering the image on his eyelids every time he blinked.

The comfortable silence returned as they both turned the conversation over in their mind. Maybe it was the ease that made Teru open his mouth again.

“I think it was less because I was trusting you, and more because I trusted a supernatural.”

It was both, that was undeniable, but the two agonies of the situation had mixed into a combination that made Teru feel sick.

“Really?” Aoi asked, voice filled with genuine disbelief.

Teru smiled, feeling his cheeks warm in the winter air.

“Maybe it was both. But that didn’t help.”

Aoi sighed, nodding. His apology rang in Teru’s head, the genuinity of it absolutely startling. No one ever sounded like that, not toward him. No one ever understood him. He never got to trust anyone, not outside of his own family.

Somehow, Aoi had smashed through all of those barriers.

“I can see that. You have a lot of unresolved issues, you know.”

The ground was stable enough for them to tease again. Something about it was relieving, the tension of the day fading away. Teru wouldn’t have to think about the gavel on his spine as he laid awake at night, anymore. He still felt foolish, but Aoi’s apology was so sincere that it sliced right through the feeling.

He smiled, blue eyes meeting brown, “Really? Hadn’t heard that one.”

An elbow poked into his side, gentler than it would have other days. It was always gentle, lately. Teru was so accustomed to harsh lines and hardship, but Aoi was anything but. His eyes were warm and soft, his hands persistently warm with the life beating between them.

“It’s related to your father, I bet?”

Teru sighed again. He didn't even remember telling Aoi that one.

“I get it, I get it,” Aoi said, waving his hands in front of him. “And I’m sorry I threw those feelings back at you. It wasn’t my intention at all. I… made a mistake. The owls liked you.”

Yet again, a piece of knowledge that made everything Teru thought he knew twist and turn in horrible, confusing ways. Mokke shouldn't like him, familiars shouldn’t like him. It was too much for him to take on today, after weeks of hardly any sleep and his brother’s dead body flashing everytime he shut his eyes.

It was a piece of knowledge, though. It was one that would sit on a shelf in the back of his mind, unable to be packed away for good. His father’s voice domineered, as it always did, but that knowledge persisted for another day.

He nodded, swallowing the heaviness in his throat.

He was a little less mad. The moment he decided to open his mouth, he’d already forgiven Aoi, really. Maybe, just maybe, communication didn’t have to be bad.

“Thanks,” he said, quietly, suddenly unsure of how to navigate.

Luckily, Aoi always knew what to say.

“I can’t believe that the student president everyone loves can be so petty!”

Teru glared at him with all of the venom that he didn’t have when he was really angry. That was a cool, decisive anger that bubbled in his chest until it made his legs bounce and his focus waver. This, however, was the familiar irritation that Aoi made him feel. It was warm and caring and felt almost like home.

This time, he elbowed Aoi. The gates of his house came into view at the end of the street.

He watched relief spread on Aoi’s features, his shoulders relaxing as he smiled. Teru was less angry, and he could see it. Talking things out had actually helped.

Teru didn’t know that an apology could actually be so helpful.

It wouldn’t have been if he didn’t already trust Aoi. Even though Aoi infuriated him in the moment, even though the hurt had curdled harshly even once the world had tilted onto a new axis, he’d been there for Teru more than nearly anyone in every moment since. He was the one person Teru could confide in, and that applied to subjects regarding them, too.

Aoi’s smile proved to be contagious, spreading onto Teru’s face even as he tried to tamp it down. He was exhausted, but at least he wasn’t mad at one of his favorite people anymore.

He took a breath of fresh air and prepared for another afternoon spent doing homework at Aoi’s side. He smiled to himself, hoping that he would stay for dinner again.

It was no coincidence that so many of the slivers of good in his day happened to happen when he was with Aoi.