Tongue Tied

Eleven

"Would you relax?" Ryusei was almost yelling at him. "It's not like I sought him out or anything!"

They'd been going back and forth for some time now, and Sae still just couldn't get his head around it. There was absolutely no reason for Ryusei and Rin to be talking about him. There was no reason for them to be talking period. Sae had to press himself right into the opposite wall just to give his hands something to do. They were standing on opposite sides of the dishevelled bed, both wearing their own looks of offense and shock.

"It doesn't matter!" Sae shot back. "You shouldn't have done that!"

"I didn't do anything!" Ryusei said back.

They were fighting, Sae realized. This was a very real fight. He'd never let anyone close enough to experience many of the intricacies of intimacy, and this was certainly one of them. He'd been yelled at before, a few times, and he'd done more than his share of giving others a hard time with his words set in harsh tone, but it rarely happened at the same time, like this, in a situation he'd been this invested in.

"Why the fuck were you talking to Rin about me?" Sae demanded again.

He'd asked four or five times at this point. He always got the same answer and genuinely wasn't expecting a different one. He was just waiting for it to make sense to him because it didn't. Not at all. Not even close.

"Like I said, I wasn't!" Ryusei said. "But once he found out we were talking, he just started laying all this unwarranted advice on me!"

That was a new elaboration. It made Sae pause. "What?"

"And do you know how much it fucks with your head to be around that constantly?" Ryusei asked back. "To be told just to give up because it's never going to work? By someone who knows you?"

The pause was over. Now Sae was furious all over again. "He doesn't know me!"

"He literally grew up with you," Ryusei fought back.

"That doesn't mean anything!" Now Sae was yelling. He hadn't meant to, but he couldn't help it. "You shouldn't have listened. Why the hell are you trusting him over me, anyways?"

"I'm not," Ryusei said, which was a lie, clearly, because if he hadn't given it at least some thought, he wouldn't have brought it up at all. "But he wasn't wrong!"

Sae paused again, but it was not in any type of forgiving way. It was with cold shock. To think that Rin of all people would say anything about him and have Ryusei translate it as the truth was a very terrifying state of affairs indeed.

"What did he say?" Sae asked.

Ryusei sighed and threw his hands up. "Nothing, okay? Nothing."

"What did he say?" Sae demanded again, louder, harsher. "That he was so right about?"

"That you overreact!" Ryusei said. It made Sae scoff. That, of all things, was rich coming from Rin. He was the baby, not him. "Which you do. And you need to have everything a certain way, exactly how you want it, and the second it gets hard or it doesn't fit this perfect little Sae bubble, you throw it away. Which you do."

"That's not true," Sae fought back.

"Yes it is!" Ryusei said. And maybe it was, to some degree, maybe. "Why the fuck do you think I've spent all this time walking on eggshells around you? Because one wrong move and you'll just fucking disappear like nothing even happened."

"That's not true!" Sae fought back.

"You've done it before," Ryusei said.

Which confused Sae, because no he hadn't. Maybe he had, when he'd first sent him the plane information, but that was only for a day, and besides, he'd gone back to him. He hadn't disappeared.