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Kaworu is feeling almost better from the last bout of being sick. He is seriously considering his medication at this point - it's not as if it affects him either way, but it's sure as hell affecting Akito and Yoite. Why he still can't understand why anyone would hold even a thought, let alone affection for him, he's never questioned it. That would be really stupid.

He's still too weak to even imagine the idea of going downstairs to order it, so he'll wait until tomorrow. After all, nobody knew he was supposed to still be taking them. He can just pretend that he was put back on the pills and injection.

Kaworu is laying on his bed reading, but he really has no idea what. He's more busy keeping an out to see if Yoite manifests today. He likes his days best when Yoite does. Of course, somehow he manages to fall asleep doing this - apparently not reading a book is tiring - but Kaworu will wake up when he needs to. He has faith in this!

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When Yoite does manifest, it's in the corner of the room that he always seems to hang about in. There's a shadow from where the sides of the all meet, and Yoite likes that. It makes him seem a little more solid, being shown not directly in the light.

(When he was alive, he'd have asked to be transparent. Funny how that works out.)

After seeing Kaworu, Yoite decides to let him sleep a while longer. He knows what it's like to be ill and need that rest, that comfort from the pain, even if it only lasts a little while. There's peace in having your eyes closed.

So Yoite watches him. Memorizes the way Kaworu's hair falls across his forehead. The way eyelashes settle. Seeing anew is still a novelty.

How easy is it to sense a ghost? The air will change, the temperature of it. You may have an odd feeling about where the ghost is, you may feel drawn there somehow. Kaworu has good instincts, but these are usually balanced out by the cooler temperatures.

Really, the bar has always been too warm for him. Not because of any illness, but simply because no matter how advanced your heating system was, you could never quite keep out the cold of the moon. But he liked it outside the moon station the best, nobody could really walk after him there. He was the only one who could breath in space. A few hours, a few days on his own, then right back to that life inside.

It is a comfort, then, when the temperature is lowered. But ten minutes, fifteen minutes, usually he realizes. It's the prickly feeling of being watched. "Good morning, Yoite," he says, a smile tugging at his lips. But he doesn't open his eyes yet. Sometimes he prefers it like this, pretending to wake up slowly, so that he can pretend the bar did a good deed and gave the other teenager the ability to touch again, too. Having a more physical form.

It hasn't happened yet.

"Good morning, Kaworu." Yoite's more used to talking again, now. A little more willing to do it. That doesn't make him talkative, per se, but then, he never was.

He'd be relieved to know that his presence was a comfort, whether it be the change in temperature or otherwise - something draws him to Kaworu, and he wants to return the favor. That's just how he is. (Sora's sweet nature never really left him. It's just been quelled due to years of abuse. That's what happens to beautiful children, sometimes.)

After a moment more of watching, Yoite approaches the bed, until he's only a foot and a half away. The light shines through him. He's still getting used to depth perception, too. Yes, that's why he came closer.

It's not that easy to convince himself of that, for some reason.

Kaworu sits up when Yoite comes closer, the blanket sliding off, but the sheet still tangling on his legs. "How have you been since last time?" he asks, looking up. Yoite is taller either way, so he does not mind having to adjust to close the difference in vision.

Sometimes Yoite has an answer for this question, sometimes he doesn't. Kaworu has no idea what really happens when a ghost is away, but he always likes stories.

Yoite has an answer, this time, but it's not very elaborate; all he says is, "Cold." There's one of the differences between the two, actually. Yoite is used to being able to bundle up and be warm, even if, in the last stages of his life, even a thick coat and turtleneck sweater left him chilled.

He's never cold when he's in this place, around Kaworu, whatever happens.

It doesn't need to be asked - how Kaworu's been doing. Yoite knows what a face looks like after being ill. His own face is still the same way. There's a tiredness, an ache for peace from it, even when things are settling. Yoite may be dead right now, but he hasn't found peace, or rest, or any of those things. He's still distraught.

"Kaworu," he says. It's not clear whether he wants to say something else, or if he's just acknowledging.

Kaworu wishes there was a way that he could help Yoite feel less distraught. Peace, rest, conclusions, whatever he needs - it is one of the few times he feels completely unselfish. He thinks Yoite would disappear if he were to obtain these things, but Kaworu is willing to risk that, anyway. Helping the other be happy is the most important, even at the expense of his own happiness.

"Yoite?" Easy way to clear it up - ask!

If Kaworu could guide Yoite to that, it would be fantastic. After all, death isn't what Yoite was aiming for; erasure is. Yoite tilts his chin down, when his name is spoken, and lets his eyes look to the side.

"Are you going to die?"

There's sorrow in his words, even though it's simply said - childlike.

...that statement itself hits in the full reality of what he had been doing, how it affected others. Kaworu never used to have to care, he never used to have to take care of anyone else. Now he has both; but somehow, even though it is much harder, he would not trade it for anything in the world. Not even the way he was, or could have been, before.

"No," Kaworu says, and then with more firm determination, "I will not." He looks down at his hand, opening and closing the fingers slowly, something to focus on so that guilt does not show itself through. "Transplant rejection - I just need to get my medicine from the bar, that's all."

"My medicine didn't save me." He's not really an optimist. Still, it's something new, having Yoite talk about 'what was.'

He understands what it's like to have your body reject something, and so he doesn't ask. But it's clear, in his eyes, in his atmosphere, that he doesn't like the idea of Kaworu dying. Why is that?

There's nothing else here for him to be drawn to. Nothing else for him to see, nothing else that could really matter. So, Kaworu matters? Yoite stumbles upon this realization completely by accident. It makes him flicker, because he's afraid, so for a moment, he isn't in the room anymore - then, he is, in his corner again. He doesn't like it.

Okay, time to get up now. It's a little hard to untrap himself from the sheet, but he manages it alright, and moves towards that corner as well. He props a hand against the wall, mostly for stability. But it helps him lean in a little closer too, study Yoite more... efficiently? Yes, that is what it is for. The act of being efficient.

That thought hardly makes sense to him, but he gives himself a pass.

"There are other measures," he reassures. "I am not going to die. I assure you of this.

But there is something else wrong, isn't there?"

It's not necessarily that Yoite is afraid of eye contact; he makes it, even initiates it, when necessary. Still, Kaworu's stare seems too... intimate, for lack of a better word, and that is what Yoite can't handle. "Something's always wrong," he says. The easy way out of it, hopefully.

Perhaps it feels that way to Kaworu, too, which is rather strange as he has no problem whatsoever getting into most peoples' personal spaces. But he ignores it, something that he is getting rather good at.

"Yes," he says, "But it is not always the same thing."

Yoite shifts, uncomfortable, and finally asks the thing he's been wondering ever since he met Kaworu - since before he started talking, since before he realized that yes, he is dead.

"Why do you understand things?" 'About me,' is what he means.

"I could ask you the same thing," he says; he backs off a little, not giving Yoite too much space back, but just enough to encourage the illusion of it.

"You are - you do not even know where I came from. But we died the same way - "

They both share the wings of the angel of death.

"You don't know where I come from, either. Kaworu, I've decided that I don't want you to hate me."

It's an admittance.

"I am not going to hate you, Yoite, I could never hate you."

Kaworu doesn't want Yoite to hate him, either.

"I will never hate you, and I will never hate Sora."

That leaves him winded, afraid, speechless and pointing.

This would be the best, necessary time to be able to touch him.

Or would it be at all?

"No," he says. "I don't... mean it like that." Kaworu places a hand near Yoite's cheek, close enough to pretend for touch, with just enough space to not screw it up. "I mean that... no one can truly know Yoite without knowing Sora. No one can truly accept Yoite without accepting Sora. No one can truly love Yoite without loving Sora."

He is trying not to think about his words now that they are out there. He was certainly not thinking while he said them. But thinking must happen and thinking turns his cheeks red. Like a girl.

Yoite has no blood to rush to his cheeks, or he'd be blushing, too. Somehow, though, he can still cry, and he does, quietly. "You shouldn't say things like that. Kaworu. You shouldn't." He's so, so afraid. Sad, too. On the one hand, he'd love to feel the contact - on the other, he thinks that it's best that he doesn't. It would be wrong. It would also make him panic.

However would it be wrong? The panic, yes, but the rest? Where could it go badly?

"It's the truth, Yoite. The truth is never wrong, but do you realize I never even told Shinji that - realize what it says, what it means -"

The former angel's eyes are almost pleading, refusing to look away. Even if that would be, would be - so much easier.

This is Yoite. Put him in a scenario and he thinks it's wrong.

"Why is it the truth?"

Yoite does look away. He seems ashamed.

"Can anyone ever know the whys?" Kaworu backs off, to sit on the floor beside his bed. He'll erase the whys, if he needs to. "Do you know them about those you love?"

"Yes." It's one of the only things he can be sure of in this life - afterlife? Existence.

Aha, then Kaworu just fails at humanity. Again.

He looks under the bed for a hoodie and puts it on - crimson, just like those eyes. It's partially an excuse to not say anything, but maybe he's getting used to bar temperatures, after all. But it still stays unzipped.

And there really is no answer he could give at the moment except self-pity, so he gives none at all.

"Kaworu thinks I'm an important person." It's not phrased as a question, but it's tentative.