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"Would you mind holding my hand and leading the way? Don't be shy, we're comrades who support each other now."
Eito's not truly lost despite his recent blindness, so there was no need for Takumi to hold his hand. A part of him was messing with his Team Leader; just playing around, testing the limits, see how much he could poke and prod and how much Takumi was willing to give him.
Even if he'd decided to trust Eito one last time, he remained wary. Their friendship was precarious at best, barely an acquaintanceship, what's with their whole lives being a fiction and not truly coming to understand each other.
Because the truth was this: Takumi didn't really trust him yet.
So he would say no.
Somewhere, though, a butterfly batted its wings.
Somewhere, sometime, something changed—and Takumi took his hand without a word. Eito jolted.
"What?" Takumi's tone was exasperated (was he pouting, was he frowning, what faces would he make, were Eito able to see him as he really was?), "Come on, I'm hungry."
For a moment, Takumi guided him and Eito followed speechless, down the stairs to the third floor. They went down slowly. Step by step. Takumi's hand was warm in his, even through the gloves. Another step, and Eito squeezed Takumi's hand, drawing them to a stop.
"Why?"
"Why, what?"
"This," he waved their interlocked hands, "I was sure you would say no."
Takumi paused, letting out a quiet hum.
"Maybe that's why," something different in his tone, almost a smile, "Maybe I wanted to see that ridiculous, shocked look on your face for once."
"Haha, so mean Takumi-kun! Don't get my hopes up," they began descending again—by his count, they were close to the landing, "Here I thought you were warming up to me."
"..." Takumi went down ahead of him, "I said I would trust you one last time. I'm not going back on my words. But it's not going to be so easy. It's...going to take time."
Would they have enough time? Would it be so simple? Eito bit down those questions. Right now, it was them and the staircase and the looming fight against V'ehxness. The future—something Eito had seldom considered that could be his, a future that didn't end in a massacre or his own death—was so close and so, so far away for them all.
"I know," Eito replied quietly, "Frankly, I thought you'd kill me for good last time. I didn't count on your heart of gold. You're too kind for your own good, Takumi-kun."
"This isn't just kindness. I can't forget what you did, and I can't forgive you, yet. In my previous timeline, you messed everything up," the lingering bitterness, the anger dripped from his tone, yet it quickly shifted, something more accepting, something that gave Eito hope, "...But I'm trying to understand that you're not that Aotsuki. You're...the you that would take his own eyes out for a chance to be with us. That says he wants to fight and live together with us."
Takumi reached the landing before him. He took both of Eito's hands in his to help him down, even thought he didn't need it, even when there was no risk of tripping.
"I'm going to trust that. So..."
As he took the last step, Takumi tugged and Eito slipped (had he counted the steps wrong or had Takumi's hands deceived him, had he done it on purpose?) yet he didn't fall: his knees bent and he nearly knocked his forehead against Takumi's, who was still holding his hands, still pulling him in, so close, the stench and the voice that grated in his ears (what would he smell like, what would he sound like, if Eito had no defects, if he wasn't a glitch, if he was like them, if he could love like—).
"Don't betray me again," a soft, firm warning, a squeeze of Eito's hands, "Because I will have to kill you, then, and I'm tired of loosing my friends."
Eito pressed his lips together, overcome by a wave of emotion threatening to swallow him. His chest felt like it would burst.
"Do you think we'll be able to understand each other?" he blurted out, voice watery.
"Who knows," Takumi exhaled out a laugh, and Eito wanted to touch that smile, trace the contour with his fingertips, imprint the shape of it in his palm, but Takumi still had both his hands prisoner, pulling him forwards, forwards, forwards, "You still creep me out most of the time."
Eito followed him like the waves chasing each other, huffing out a laugh of his own, something like hope blossoming under his skin, over the lonely feeling that had taken root since the moment he existed, "And to me, you're so—ah...no, nevermind."
"What? Are you getting shy now?"
"No, I just think I shouldn't say it yet."
"You're always so cryptic..."
"Hehe, when this is all over, maybe I'll tell you. Why don't we go on a date then?"
"HUH?!"
"Oh, are you blushing, Takumi-kun?"
"I'm NOT, who'd want to go on a date with you!?"
"Ah, don't let go! I'll get lost!"
"No, you won't! Find the way on your own!"
"Takumi-kun!"
Their steps and Eito's laughter bounces off the walls in the hall, all the way to the Cafeteria, where their friends teased and proded Takumi about the red on his cheeks. A glowing moment, worth preserving in a bottle, worth making eternal.
Eito had been looking forward to it.
Even if they didn't call it a date. Even if Takumi would be grumpy and pretend Eito had unwillingly dragged him somewhere, he couldn't resist when people made requests out of him. They would go to some mundane place, like normal friends did, if they could ever be considered normal after all they'd been through, and feel the sun, rain in their skin, free from fighting, free from a makeshift fiction.
The future ahead of them would be real and it would be theirs.
Such simple, happy endings had no place in this world though. Perhaps they'd been doomed from the very start.
For a boy like Takumi, he would lay down his life; he followed him, they followed him, guided by him, to the very end of the tale, engulfed in flames.
"You...until the very end..."
Takumi was grabbing his hand as he laid in a puddle of his own blood. What face was he making, as each of them fell, fighting a system they were never meant to beat?
"I loathed, despised, hated..."
It was all over so there was no reason not to tell him what he'd been holding so dearly onto. He choked on the hope, on the blood rising up his throat, and squeezed Takumi's hand back.
"...And deeply loved you."
Takumi's breath hitched.
(Would he have blushed in another time and place?)
(Would he have said it back?)
There was no time for tearful replies nor rejections.
As Takumi plunged the infuser in his chest, droplets of rain fell on Eito's face, like a final loving memory, a final goodbye to his world.