Feel My Heart Beat

Flux

Akihito left the Sion office building in a daze. He couldn't quite wrap his head around the magnitude of the information he had just learned. It was late morning and Akihito had a friend's birthday to go to that evening so he wouldn't see Asami until late tonight or tomorrow at the earliest and he was probably going to need the entire afternoon to get his head around it all. It was like something you would see on the news or read in the paper. Something that you knew could happen but never in a million years think that it would happen to someone close to you.

He walked out into the Tokyo streets aimlessly. He needed to think and he always found it easier to move while doing so. The motion seemed to help him process things. He just couldn't imagine the pain Asami must have felt. His lover had been killed right in front of him. And he blamed himself. He remembered what Kirishima had said just as he was about to leave.

"I'm not sure if I actually said this earlier." Akihito had turned to look back at the secretary with his hand resting on the door handle. "I never blamed him. Not once. No one did. No one blamed him but himself."

Asami not only had to deal with grief but guilt. And apparently he had done so badly, if at all.

"What followed was a train wreck. He didn't care if he lived or died. The only thing worth living for had died because of him, his words not mine."

Akihito found himself walking into quiet suburbs already surprisingly far from Sion and the busy shopping districts. He ignored his surroundings and let his thoughts take over again. The man had not only lost a lover, he had lost her on the day they we allowed to start planning for a future. It was a cruel twist of fate that they were out celebrating her health and that was the day she died. Like Asami had been finally allowed to dream and it had been snatched away immediately. Then he lost another close friend.

"Unfortunately it took another death to bring him back to his senses... He was a broken shell of a man at that point."

Akihito began to jog and slowly sped up until he was running full tilt down a quieter side street and cast about for a likely looking building. When he found one with obvious hand holds and leverage points, he veered over to it and scrambled up the side of the building. Up and on the roof, he continued his mad dash and maneuvered his way across the tops of the small buildings. The burn in his lungs and the strain in his muscles as he ran and jumped felt good. It cleared his head and narrowed his focus.

The loss and the betrayal that led to it explained so much. Why Asami didn't take no as an answer and just did what he wanted. Why he forced three guards on Akihito at all times, a better security force than he himself had. Why Akihito not answering his calls had hurt him so much. Why he was so possessive. Why he didn't seem to want to let Akihito in. Why Sudou's possible betrayal had caused that dark tone in Asami's voice over the phone. Hurt once, then twice. Now he had even more to lose. Would Asami even survive if something happened to Akihito? He doubted it. Not after Kirishima's words.

"No matter what I tried I couldn't pull him out of his self-destructive spiral."

Yet the man was holding onto that pain still. He never healed, just hid it away. And that one morning it peeked out and Akihito not only saw it, he felt it. He remember the painful twisting in his chest and the neediness of his soulmate for the rest of the day. He remembered Asami's constant surprise every time Akihito let the man in to see all of him. Exposed himself under that gaze. Surprised because he was so blinded by his own pain he was hiding that he couldn't imagine opening up to anyone again.

Akihito slowed to a stop on a long roof top and bent over, hands on knees while he caught his breath. He didn't know what on earth he was going to do to try and help Asami heal but at least he understood what was behind everything. He was startled when he heard multiple thuds behind him and turned to find all three guards sitting on the roof desperately trying to catch their breath. Oh right. He had forgotten about them.