Taiga snorted. "My heart is black," he said, "and heavy. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Killing him should have let me out of prison, but I'm still caged. I walk down the street and am stopped by a man who saw one of my porn vids, who describes to me what he'd do to me if he had me bound in his bed. I wonder if it's one of the videos I was raped in. It's been years and years since I trusted anyone. I'm traumatized and addicted to more substances than I can name and have no one to turn to. I can't see a psychiatrist, because I can't ever be sure they aren't feeding my vulnerabilities to an enemy, but I know I'm clinically depressed and have PTSD. My heart is very heavy, indeed."<br/><br/>Taiga looked at Mashi, feeling his hand on his cheek, warm and large and calloused.<br/><br/>"Well, it'll just have to stay, then, out in cyberspace and roping us together."<br/><br/>He leaned in and kissed Mashi, gently and searchingly. He leaned back after their lips pressed and rolled his head back onto the lip of the bath, looking up at the sky. "I'm sorry. I don't know. It's the only way I know how to be vulnerable, I think. Or something."<br/><br/>He was frustrated, and he thought about why and tried to articulate it.<br/><br/>"I'm telling you everything, and it's so dangerous. Good men can be tempted or forced to do bad things. I know that so well. I don't understand my desire for you to understand, my attraction to you—"<br/><br/>He shook his head sharply. "Ignore me, Hibiki-san."<br/><br/>He was pulled tight as a wire, and he looked lost and vulnerable, and suddenly you could see fully how<i>young</i>he was. He was in his mid-twenties, at an age where the last vestiges of boyhood were left behind, but when you saw him on an average day you'd guess he was in his forties already, he was so world-weary and jaded.