Akira's lashes parted like a slow dawn—weighted, reluctant, the silt of dreams still dragging at the edges of his vision. The first thing he registered was heat: a palm-sized pressure against his shoulder, five fingers spread across the muscle, thumb pressed into the ridge where tension lived like a second spine. Seraph. He knew the weight of that hand without turning, knew the callus pattern from years of watching those same fingers wrap around knife hilts and gun grips and, more recently, the curve of his own jaw.
The couch leather held the memory of sweat beneath his bare thighs. Sandalwood and something damp—rain on wool, the ghost of winter coats left too close to the heater. His apartment. His couch. His body, still heavy with whatever his incubus biology had done to him while he slept.
And beneath his stomach, a glow. Faint. Rhythmic. Pulsing in time with a heartbeat that felt borrowed.
"He's awake." Kanato's voice from the doorway, unhurried as honey dripping off a spoon. Not a question. Kanato rarely asked questions when he already knew the answer.
Akira turned his head—slow, careful, the way you move when you're testing whether the world will spin. Kanato leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, amber eyes catching the weak morning light like coins at the bottom of a fountain. His smile was small. Private. The kind he wore when he was cataloguing something for later use.
Seraph's thumb pressed once more into Akira's shoulder—grounding, steady, not asking permission because Seraph had stopped asking for things like that somewhere between their third year at SPIA and the night they ran. The mark beneath Akira's stomach pulsed in answer. Violet light seeped through the thin fabric of his shirt, hungry and visible and waiting.
"How long?" Akira's voice came out rough, scraped raw from sleep.
"Fourteen hours." Kanato pushed off the doorframe, moving into the room with the easy grace of someone who'd never had to question where his body belonged in a space. "Your energy drains faster when you're physically sick. The fever burned through what I gave you." He stopped at the edge of the couch, looking down at Akira with something that might have been tenderness if it weren't so calculating. "You'll stay at my place. Until you're stable."
"Kanato—"
"That wasn't a question, Akira."
Seraph's hand withdrew from Akira's shoulder. The absence of heat was immediate, like stepping out of sunlight. "He's right. The mark's still pulsing. You're not done feeding."
Akira closed his eyes. The ceiling was easier to look at than the two of them hovering. "I can manage."
"You passed out on my couch fourteen hours ago and woke up still hungry." Seraph's voice was flat, clinical. The tone he used when he was reporting mission parameters. "That's not managing. That's surviving."
"And survival," Kanato added, "is what you did at SPIA. You're not there anymore."
Silence. The radiator clicked somewhere in the apartment. Outside, a car horn bleated twice. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. Akira focused on them the way he'd been trained to focus on exits and sightlines and the weight of a gun against his ribs.
"Fine." One word. Exhausted. Honest in a way he was still learning to be.
Kanato's smile widened, just slightly. "Good boy."
The mark flared under Akira's shirt. He felt his face heat and hated it.
Seraph stood. The couch creaked as his weight lifted, and Akira caught the briefest flicker of something in those pale eyes—relief, maybe, or the quiet satisfaction of someone who'd won an argument without raising his voice. "Hibari's making soup. He'll be here in an hour."
"He doesn't need to—"
"He wants to." Seraph was already moving toward the door. "Let him."
And then it was just Kanato, still standing at the edge of the couch, looking down at Akira with those amber eyes that never quite stopped assessing.
"Tomorrow morning," Kanato said. "You'll be at my place. We'll figure out a schedule."
"Schedule?"
"For feeding. For rest. For making sure you don't burn through your reserves again." His head tilted. The easy smile flickered back. "I have a stream in the morning. Valorant practice with Kuzuha-senpai and the others. You can sleep in my bed."
Akira opened his mouth. Closed it. The implication sat between them—you'll be in my bed, not on my couch, not in a guest room—and Kanato watched him process it with the patience of a cat watching a bird.
"I don't need—"
"You do. The contract works better when we're close. Proximity stabilizes the energy transfer." A pause. "Also, my sheets are nicer than yours."
Akira laughed. It came out rough and surprised, cracking something open in his chest that had been clamped shut since he'd woken. "That's your argument? Better thread count?"
"Egyptian cotton." Kanato's grin was sharp and genuine. "You'll never go back."
The morning of the stream came wrapped in grey light and the distant hum of traffic fifteen floors below. Akira woke in Kanato's bed—Egyptian cotton, annoyingly soft—with the mark beneath his stomach warm but not urgent, a banked fire rather than a blaze. He'd slept through the night without dreams. Without the scar on his throat pulling him back into old rooms and older fears.
Beside him, Kanato was already moving. Careful. Quiet. The kind of quiet that meant he was trying not to wake anyone, which was strange because Kanato never tried to be quiet for anyone.
"Stream," Kanato murmured, catching Akira's half-lidded gaze. "Valorant practice. Go back to sleep."
"Mm." Akira burrowed deeper into the pillow. The sheets smelled like Kanato—something clean and sharp, bergamot and cedar, with an undertone of smoke that never quite washed out. "Good luck."
Kanato paused at the door, one hand on the frame. "I don't need luck. I need Kuzuha-senpai to stop peeking mid like he's playing a horror game."
Akira's laugh was muffled by the pillow. "Tell him I said hello."
"You can tell him yourself later. Sleep."
The door clicked shut. Akira closed his eyes and let the warmth pull him back under.
Kanato settled into his streaming chair with a practiced ease, headset sliding over his ears like a second skin. The monitors flickered to life: Discord, OBS, the familiar lobby screen of Valorant with its rotating character models and the endless scroll of skins he'd collected over years of playing. His chat was already moving, emojis and greetings stacking up faster than he could read them.
"Ohayou gozaimasu," he said, voice bright and easy, the public Kanato sliding into place without friction. "Morning, morning. We've got practice today with the usual crew—Kuzuha-senpai, Lauren-san, Rou-kun, and Sho-kun. Tournament's next month, so we're getting serious."
A pause. He scanned the chat, catching a few familiar names.
"Yes, serious. I can be serious. Don't laugh."
Kuzuha's icon lit up on Discord. "You? Serious? The same Kanato who bought the dragon skin because 'it matches my eyes'?"
"It does match my eyes."
"That's not a tactical reason."
"Fashion is always tactical."
Lauren's laugh crackled through the call. "He's got you there, Kuzuha."
Rou's voice came next, relaxed and unhurried as always. "We ready to queue? Sho's already in lobby."
"Let's go," Kanato said, and the first match loaded in.
The game was tight. Diamond lobby, coordinated pushes, the kind of match that made Kanato's fingers fly across the keyboard and his brain shift into the cold, tactical space he'd learned long before vtubing—back when reading an opponent meant the difference between walking away and not walking away at all. They pushed through twelve rounds with clean comms and sharp aim, Kuzuha calling rotations in his low, measured voice, Lauren anchoring mid with the steady aggression of someone who'd been doing this longer than most of them had been alive in the industry, Sho holding angles like he was born behind a scope.
And Rou, the junior, the one who'd debuted six months after Voltaction and still called Kanato "Kanato-san" with a deference that made Kanato want to ruffle his hair—Rou clutched a 1v3 in the eleventh round with a sheriff and three headshots that left the entire Discord call screaming.
"ROU-KUN!"
"What the—how—"
"I blacked out," Rou said, voice calm even as the excitement trembled underneath. "I literally don't remember doing that."
"Clip it. Someone clip it. That's going on Twitter." Lauren was already laughing. "Nagi-san's going to lose his mind when he sees that."
Kanato grinned, glancing at his chat—which had exploded into a wall of emotes and keyboard smashes. "Akira's still asleep. He'll catch the VOD."
"Still asleep? It's almost noon."
"He was tired." Kanato's voice softened, just slightly, before he caught himself and pulled back to neutral. "Long week."
The match ended on a narrow victory—13-11, a grind of a game that left all of them exhaling hard and slumping back in their chairs. Kuzuha called for a break. Sho muttered something about needing water. Lauren announced he was ordering breakfast.
"Breakfast? It's almost one."
"Breakfast is a state of mind, Kanato."
"That's not how time works."
"Don't argue with Lauren-san about food," Kuzuha said, deadpan. "You'll lose."
Kanato laughed, pulling up his skin collection while the others shuffled away from their mics—the rustle of chairs, the distant clink of glasses, Sho humming something off-key that might have been an anime opening. The chat was still moving, slower now, the easy lull of a break filling the stream with comfortable silence.
He was scrolling through his Vandal skins—debating between the Reaver and the newly released Kuronami—when Lauren's voice cut through the quiet.
"Kanato. Someone's calling you."
"Hm?"
"Behind you. I heard someone."
Kanato rotated his chair. No knock. No footsteps. The door to his bedroom—the room where Akira was supposed to be sleeping—hung open just a crack, and through the gap, a figure. Dark hair. Lean shoulders. Bare feet on the hardwood floor.
Akira stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame like he was holding himself up. His eyes were half-lidded, still hazed with sleep, and there was a tension in his jaw that Kanato recognized—the tight, controlled stillness of someone fighting down panic. His shirt—Kanato's shirt, actually, too broad in the shoulders, hanging loose around his collarbones—was rumpled. The mark beneath his stomach pulsed faintly, a violet glow visible even through the fabric.
He didn't speak. Didn't step forward. Just stood there, hesitating, caught between the bedroom and the stream room like a man frozen on a threshold.
Kanato moved without thinking. One hand reached up to mute the stream audio and pause the video—chat would wonder, let them wonder—but he left Discord open. The call stayed live. His team could hear. He didn't care.
"Akira." He kept his voice low, gentle, the way you speak to something wounded that might bolt. "Oide."
Come here.
He opened his arms.
Akira's hesitation lasted one breath. Two. Then he moved—silent, trained, the old SPIA habits bleeding through in the way his feet found the floorboards that didn't creak, the way his shoulders stayed low and loose even when everything else about him was trembling.
Kanato pulled him onto his lap with a gentleness that surprised even himself. The gaming chair creaked under their combined weight—177 centimeters of mafia heir and 174 centimeters of former spy, 70 kilos and 60 kilos, a tangle of lean muscle and borrowed warmth—but it held. Akira's legs draped over the armrest, his head finding the hollow of Kanato's shoulder like it was designed for exactly that purpose.
The mic picked up the rustle of fabric. Kanato didn't mute it.
"Bad dream?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Akira's answer was a hum. Low. Deep. The lowest voice in Voltaction, the one that always made fans in the comments section talk about ASMR and late-night radio and the kind of sound you could feel in your chest. Now it vibrated against Kanato's neck, wordless and tired.
In the Discord call, Lauren's voice came through quiet and careful. "Kanato… is that Akira-kun?"
"Yeah." Kanato's hand found the back of Akira's head, fingers threading through dark hair. "He's asleep."
"He was just—"
"He's asleep now."
And he was. Just like that. Akira's breathing had already evened out, slow and rhythmic against Kanato's collarbone, the tension draining from his body in increments. One leg shifted, finding a more comfortable position on the armrest. His fingers had curled loosely into the fabric of Kanato's hoodie, holding on without gripping, the way a child holds a blanket.
In the Discord call, silence. Then Kuzuha, hesitant: "Should we…?"
"Stay," Kanato said quietly. "I'll keep him here. He sleeps better when he's not alone."
Rou's mic crackled. "Nagi-san has nightmares?"
"Sometimes." Kanato's thumb traced slow circles at the nape of Akira's neck. "Old stuff. SPIA things. You know how it is."
They didn't, not really, but they understood enough. Everyone in Nijisanji who'd come from the underworld understood enough.
Lauren exhaled, a soft sound that might have been sympathy. "He looks…"
"Yeah?"
"Small. Like that. In your lap."
Kanato glanced down at the man curled against him—the same man who'd taken a bullet through the leg four years ago and kept running, the same man who'd endured honey trap missions at fifteen and never broke, the same man who'd walked into Kanato's apartment three days ago burning with an incubus fever and still tried to apologize for the inconvenience. "He's not small," Kanato murmured. "He's just tired."
Sho's voice, softer than usual: "He trusts you."
"Yeah." The word came out rougher than Kanato intended. "He does."
A pause. Then Lauren, with the careful brightness of someone changing the subject: "So this is what you've been hiding, huh? Boyfriend sleeping on your lap while you game?"
"He's not—" Kanato caught himself. What was the right word? Partner? Contract-bound incubus feeding subject? The man who'd begged for him twenty-eight times and then had a panic attack when Kanato touched his scar? "We haven't put a label on it."
"Uh-huh." Kuzuha's voice was dry. "And the other two? Seraph and Hibari?"
Kanato didn't answer immediately. His hand had found the hem of Akira's shirt—his shirt—and slipped beneath, fingers splaying across the warm skin of his stomach. The mark pulsed under his touch, violet light bleeding between his fingers, and Akira made a soft, unconscious sound in his sleep. Something close to contentment.
"Them too," Kanato said finally. "It's complicated."
"Complicated," Lauren repeated. "Four of you. Complicated."
"Is that a problem?"
"No! No, I just—" Lauren's voice cracked into something that sounded almost flustered. "You're all just… really good-looking. And seeing you like this, with Akira-kun all soft and—he's usually so put-together, you know? On stream, I mean. And this is—"
"Lauren-san is short-circuiting," Kuzuha observed.
"I am not—"
"You absolutely are," Rou said, laughter threading through his laid-back drawl. "But I get it. Nagi-san's always so cool in collabs. Seeing him like this is…" A pause. "Kind of cute, actually."
"Cute," Kanato repeated, and felt his grin stretch wide. "I'm going to tell him you said that."
"Please don't. He'll murder me in Monster Hunter next time we play."
The chat—Kanato glanced at his secondary monitor—had gone absolutely feral. He hadn't turned the stream back on, but his chat was still visible in OBS, and it was scrolling so fast he couldn't read individual messages. Emojis. All-caps. The word "AKIRA" appearing over and over. They'd heard the voice. They'd heard that low, sleepy hum before Kanato had muted.
He should probably address that. Later.
Right now, Akira shifted against his chest, stirring just enough to murmur something unintelligible into Kanato's hoodie. Kanato's hand tightened reflexively on his stomach, the mark pulsing once in answer, and Akira settled again.
"You're absolutely whipped," Kuzuha said, no inflection at all.
"I am holding a very tired, very warm man who happens to be gorgeous and good at his job and somehow willing to put up with me. If that's whipped, then call me cream."
Lauren choked. Sho made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. Rou just sighed, long-suffering and familiar.
"Kanato-san," Rou said, "that was terrible."
"Thank you. I try."
"Please unmute your stream."
"In a minute. He's comfortable."
They played two more matches with Akira asleep on Kanato's lap. The chair held. The mic picked up occasional rustles—fabric shifting, the soft exhale of breath—but Kanato's comms stayed clean, his aim sharp, his callouts crisp. He'd learned to compartmentalize years ago: the part of his brain that tracked enemy positions and the part that counted Akira's heartbeats against his thigh existed in parallel, never crossing.
Between rounds, the conversation drifted. Kuzuha asked if the other Voltaction members played FPS. Lauren answered first—Hibari did, they'd been in the same boy band unit for festivals, they'd practiced together. Kanato added that Seraph played too, learned fast, but preferred horror games; he only practiced when tournaments came up.
"And Shikinagi-san?" Kuzuha asked.
"Casual," Kanato said. "He understands the game. Good game sense. But the dynamic camera gives him headaches if he plays more than two hours."
Rou chimed in: "He ran practice with me the other day. Refused to join the tournament team, though. Said he'd be dead weight."
Kanato laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like him. You remember the time we played together on stream and he announced his goal was to get one kill?"
"One kill," Lauren repeated, delighted. "In a whole match?"
"He got three. Was genuinely surprised."
"Doesn't bother him? Being the casual one?"
"Nah." Kanato's hand had found its way back to Akira's hair, stroking absently while he spoke. "When that new battle royale dropped last year, everyone was grinding it for a week straight. Akira just chilled in Monster Hunter and told us to 'be good enough to carry me when I try it.'" He smiled, genuine and warm. "He doesn't get insecure about stuff like that. Knows his strengths. Knows ours. We're not all good at the same things, and that's why it works."
"Completing each other," Kuzuha murmured. "That's… nice."
"Yeah." Kanato glanced down at the dark head against his shoulder. "It is."
The second break came after a win—decisive, 13-5, the kind of match that made the tournament feel possible. Everyone was loose, laughing, the Discord call a warm hum of overlapping voices as water bottles clinked and takeout orders were debated. Kanato reached for his own drink—cold barley tea, the kind Hibari had started buying for him after he mentioned missing it—and was mid-sip when Akira stirred.
Not the gentle shifting of someone waking naturally. This was sharper. A jerk of the shoulders. A hitch in his breathing. His fingers, still curled in Kanato's hoodie, tightened until the knuckles went white.
Kanato set the bottle aside. "Akira."
No response. The mark beneath his stomach flared—violet, urgent—and Akira's breath stuttered into something too fast, too shallow, the rhythm of a body convinced it was in danger.
"Hey. Hey." Kanato's hand moved from hair to shoulder, shaking gently. "Akira. Wake up."
In the Discord call, the chatter died. Kanato didn't notice. Didn't care. His mic was still hot—the stream was still hot—but none of that mattered.
"Akira."
A sharp inhale. Akira's eyes flew open—dark, unfocused, scanning the room like he was mapping exits. His body went rigid against Kanato's chest, every muscle locked, and for a terrible second he was somewhere else. Somewhere with cold floors and restraints and hands that didn't stop when he asked them to.
"It's okay." Kanato's voice dropped, soft and steady. "You're in my apartment. Streaming room. Valorant practice. Kuzuha-senpai and Lauren-san and Rou-kun and Sho-kun are on Discord. No one's going to hurt you."
Akira's breath caught. Held. Then released, shaky and uncertain.
"No one can touch you," Kanato continued, his hand moving in slow circles on Akira's back. "You're safe. I've got you."
The words spilled out without thought—a litany, a promise, the kind of thing Kanato never said to anyone else. In the Discord call, silence. In the stream chat—still visible on the second monitor—a tidal wave of confusion and concern.
"Kanato?" Kuzuha's voice, hesitant. "Is he okay?"
"Nightmare." Kanato didn't look away from Akira's face. "He gets them sometimes. Old stuff."
"Should we—"
"Stay. Just… give us a minute."
Akira's breathing was evening out. His eyes had found Kanato's face now, really seeing him, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. "…Kanato?"
"Hey. You're back."
"I was…" He blinked. Swallowed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"Don't." Kanato's thumb pressed against the corner of his jaw, tilting his face up. "You don't apologize for this. Ever."
Akira held his gaze for a long moment. Then he exhaled, long and slow, and let his head drop back to Kanato's shoulder. "Okay."
"Okay."
A beat of silence. Then Akira spoke again, voice still rough but steadier: "I promised Seraph I'd play horror games with him this afternoon. Collab stream."
Kanato's eyebrows rose. "Today?"
"Mm. Announced it yesterday. Should be on my schedule."
In the secondary monitor, Kanato's chat went absolutely nuclear. He caught glimpses between names: COLLAB? HORROR GAME WITH SERAPH? WHEN WAS THIS ANNOUNCED? AKIRA HASN'T POSTED ANYTHING.
"Your chat's losing its mind," he said mildly.
Akira made a sound that might have been a laugh. "Forgot to update the schedule. Oops."
"Oops," Kanato repeated, grinning. "The fans are going to riot."
"They'll live." Akira shifted, trying to sit up, and Kanato's hand tightened instinctively on his waist. "I need to get ready. Office is forty minutes by car."
"Food first." Kanato was already reaching for his phone, pulling up the Uber Eats app. "You haven't eaten since yesterday."
"Kanato—"
"I'm paying."
Akira lifted his head, squinting at the screen. "That's the place with the wagyu bowls. That's—Kanato, that's expensive."
"I'm aware."
"You can't just—"
"I can. I will. I am." Kanato's thumb hovered over the order button. "What do you want?"
Akira stared at him. The mark beneath his stomach pulsed once, soft violet, and Kanato felt the warmth of it through his own skin. "The… the gyudon. With the onsen egg."
"Good choice. Anything else?"
"…Miso soup?"
"Done." Kanato tapped the order through without looking at the total. In his ear, he could hear Lauren snickering and Rou muttering something about "sugar daddy energy," but Akira couldn't hear them—the Discord audio was still routed through Kanato's headset. A small mercy.
"You've been eating at this place since high school," Akira said, a note of accusation in his voice.
"The wagyu is good."
"It's ninety dollars a bowl."
"The wagyu is very good."
Akira laughed—a real laugh this time, rough and surprised and warm—and Kanato felt something loosen in his chest. In the Discord call, Sho made a soft noise that sounded suspiciously like "cute," and Kuzuha immediately told him to shut up.
The food arrived forty minutes later, and Akira insisted on getting it himself. Kanato made him pause at the door, one hand on his wrist. "How's your leg?"
"Fine."
"Akira."
"It's fine. Really." He flexed the ankle, rotated it. "See? No pain."
Kanato studied him for a long moment, amber eyes cataloguing every micro-expression. Then he nodded. "Go."
Akira returned with two bags that smelled so good Kanato's stomach actually growled—an embarrassing sound that Lauren caught on Discord and immediately mocked him for. Kanato handed Akira a spare headset so he could join the call, and suddenly the dynamic shifted: Rou's voice brightened, Sho became more active, and even Kuzuha's customary reserve softened as they all settled in to eat together, a virtual lunch table spread across the city.
"Nagi-san," Rou said, "are you really playing horror games with Seraph-san today?"
"Mm. He's been wanting to try that new one. The apartment complex."
"The one where the walls breathe?"
"That's the one."
"You hate horror games."
"I hate horror games," Akira agreed, taking a bite of gyudon. "But Seraph likes them, and he's good at them, so I just sit there and react while he does all the work. It's a good dynamic."
"Carried in FPS, carried in horror games," Kanato said. "You've got a pattern."
"I'm very comfortable being carried." Akira's voice was completely deadpan. "It's a lifestyle."
Lauren laughed so hard he had to mute his mic. Sho made the strangled sound again. Even Kuzuha cracked, a soft exhale that was almost a chuckle.
"I respect that," Rou said. "But the tournament team could really use—"
"No."
"Just one match—"
"Rou-kun. I get headaches after two hours. I would be dead weight, and you would have to carry my corpse across the finish line. Is that what you want?"
"When you put it like that…"
"I'm doing you a favor."
"You're very generous, Nagi-san."
"I know."
Akira left for the office around two, shrugging into his coat with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been dressing for missions since his teens. Kanato watched him from the streaming chair, noting the way he favored his left leg just slightly—not a limp, not anymore, but a ghost of one. The old wound. Four years old and still present, still reminding.
After the door clicked shut, the Discord call settled into a different kind of silence. Softer. More thoughtful.
"Kanato," Kuzuha said eventually, "is Shikinagi-san unwell? You seemed worried earlier."
"He had a rough night. Old injury acting up." Kanato leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "His leg. Got shot a few years ago."
"Shot?" Lauren's voice sharpened. "When?"
"Four years back. He was covering Seraph during…" Kanato paused. Found the performance voice, the one that walked the line between truth and lore. "During their escape. From the underworld. You know how it goes—bullets flying, dramatic last stands, the whole thing."
To the VOD, it would sound like storytelling. Character backstory. The fictional lore of Voltaction that fans pieced together from fragments and hints.
To the four men on the call, it was something else entirely.
"He took a bullet for Seraph," Lauren said, and it wasn't a question.
"Through the leg. Kept running. Didn't tell anyone how bad it was until they were safe." Kanato's voice stayed light, but something underneath it had gone hard. "He's been doing all of Voltaction's physical projects on that leg for years. The hiking streams, the sports festivals, the obstacle courses. Never complained once."
Rou's voice was quiet. "That's…"
"Yeah."
Lauren exhaled. "I knew he was tough. I didn't know he was that tough."
"Most people don't." Kanato closed his eyes. The mark on Akira's stomach, the pulse of it against his palm, the way he'd gone rigid at the nightmare—all of it flickered behind his eyelids. "He doesn't let them."
A long pause. Then Kuzuha, softer than Kanato had ever heard him: "And the director? The one who harassed him? We've heard rumors."
Kanato's jaw tightened. "What rumors?"
"Staff is talking. Managers, mostly. Word gets around."
"Someone put hands on Akira-kun at a meeting," Lauren said, and his voice had lost all its usual playfulness. "That's what we heard. Is it true?"
"Seraph kicked him through a door." Kanato's words came out flat, cold. "I wish he'd done more."
"Is it being handled?"
"Management's investigating. But that's not—" He stopped. Ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "It keeps happening. Not just directors. Random people. Last month, we were meeting up at the station—all four of us, just a day out—and Akira got there early. Some guy walked up to him and invited him to a hotel. Just like that. No introduction, no nothing. Saw Akira standing there looking the way he looks and decided he was available."
"What did Akira do?"
"Nothing. Froze. Seraph got there before I did and the guy ran." Kanato's laugh was bitter. "No wonder he drives everywhere. Even when the train's faster."
The silence that followed was heavy. Kanato could feel his friends processing—Kuzuha with his careful reserve, Lauren with his protective streak, Rou and Sho with the particular alarm of juniors hearing about a senior being hurt.
"People see someone beautiful," Kanato said, "and they think they have a right. To touch. To take. To push. And Akira—" He stopped. The words were getting too close to the truth. Too close to SPIA, to the honey traps, to the conditioning that had taught a fifteen-year-old boy to say yes to everything. "Akira just takes it. He shouldn't have to. He shouldn't have to fight off the whole world just to exist."
"Kanato." Kuzuha's voice was steady. "You're not alone in this. Voltaction isn't alone."
"I know."
"Do you?"
Kanato opened his eyes. The ceiling was still there. The monitors were still there. The chat—frozen on his paused stream, still spamming questions about Akira—was still there.
"I'm learning," he said. "We all are."
The stream ended at four. Kanato said his goodbyes, traded a few more jabs with Lauren about his sugar daddy tendencies, promised Kuzuha they'd run more practice later in the week, and closed OBS. The Discord call stayed live. Just him and his team now—no audience, no performance, just five men who'd known each other long enough that silence wasn't awkward.
"That thing you mentioned," Lauren said. "The incubus manifestation. How bad is it?"
Kanato hesitated. The contract was private—sacred, even—but these were his friends. They'd watched him hold Akira through a nightmare on stream. They'd earned at least some of the truth.
"It's new. We're figuring it out." He chose his words carefully. "His body's going through changes. Needs things it didn't need before. We've got a system now—me, Seraph, Hibari—but it's fragile. If something goes wrong…"
"It drains him," Kuzuha said. "That's what you meant earlier. About the energy."
"Yeah. When he's sick, it's worse. When he's stressed, it's worse. When someone puts their hands on him without permission and triggers every trauma response his body's ever learned—" Kanato cut himself off. Took a breath. "It's worse."
Lauren's voice was careful. "Is there anything we can do?"
"You're already doing it. Treating him like a person. Like a colleague and a friend and someone who deserves respect." Kanato's smile was tired but genuine. "You'd be surprised how rare that is."
"That's a low bar."
"The world sets low bars for beautiful people. Especially the ones who've been taught not to fight back."
Rou spoke up, quieter than usual. "Nagi-san's always been kind to me. When I debuted, he was the first senior to reach out. Helped me with my streaming setup, introduced me to people, made sure I wasn't drowning." A pause. "If he ever needs anything—if any of you need anything—"
"I'll tell him." Kanato meant it. "Thank you."
The call wound down after that. Goodbyes, see-you-tomorrows, the soft click of disconnection. Kanato sat in the silence of his streaming room, the gaming chair still warm where Akira had been curled against him, and stared at the dark monitors.
Somewhere across the city, Akira was at the Nijisanji office, sitting beside Seraph, screaming at a horror game while thousands of fans watched and laughed. Hibari was probably in the next room, editing a video or practicing vocals or doing one of the hundred things Hibari did with his boundless energy. And Kanato was here, alone, the ghost of Akira's weight still pressed against his chest.
He reached down and touched his stomach—the place where the mark had pulsed against him, violet and hungry and alive.
"Come home safe," he murmured to no one. "All three of you."