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When Kaneki sneaks back into his apartment one Thursday afternoon, he doesn’t expect Nagachika Hideyoshi to open the front door and nonchalantly turn on the entrance light. Silence reigns for several seconds after the open bag of clothes in Kaneki’s arms drops to the floor. Hide draws himself up and his face sets in determination.
“Kaneki, what is up with you recently?” says Hide.
“Sorry?”
“I know you like to hide away once in a while—and that’s fine, I get it, I know you, I’m… I’m used to it, but Kaneki,” Hide rambles, “this is, it’s too much, buddy. You’re completely isolating yourself and I’m worried about you! Please, let me worry about you—you’re not… protecting me, or whatever you think you’re doing by avoiding me, you’re just hurting both of us.” He suddenly tears up, voice a choked mix of grief and frustration. “Rabbits die of loneliness, Kaneki. Talk to me.”
Kaneki can’t even open his mouth, let alone speak. He looks at Hide, really looks at him; his roots grown out worse than ever before, his rumpled clothes, the despair and fear and helplessness painted clear on his face, and he realises that Hide is not alright without him. He might be better off in the end, but he’s not alright now.
And Kaneki doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
He has always been good with words – a bookworm, a bibliophile, a nerd – and yet at moments like these, when words matter, when they could change everything, he finds himself speechless. His voice is stolen from him just as violently as his humanity.
So, he shakes his head and shies away. He hugs himself and he wishes that knife had gone through his skin that day in October so he wouldn’t have to deal with this, any of this. Kaneki avoids the problem; he’s a coward at heart and it shows now like it showed when he couldn’t answer Yamori correctly – “Mother or child, which one should I kill?” – when he didn’t try to protect Ryouko-san from the Investigators, when he ran from Rize into that construction site, when he hid his test scores from his aunt after she scolded him, when he… when he started to be like his mother.
Kaneki pulls at his white fringe and looks around the apartment. Hide stands in the way of the door, but Kaneki knows he could make it out of a window; it wouldn’t hurt much, not after Yamori.
“Ken.”
His eyes flit back to Hide. Hide is smiling a sad, gentle smile like night rain steadily becoming soft snow as winter cools the air. He walks closer to Kaneki, who freezes, and takes hold of his arm, following it down until he can thread his fingers into Kaneki’s trembling hand. He doesn’t comment on the blackened fingernails. It’s unusual; Hide’s touches are usually warm but fleeting. Instead, this touch is lingering and still cold from the journey he had made to Kaneki’s abandoned apartment.
“Stop running from me.” Using the grasp he has on Kaneki’s hand, Hide guides him into his bedroom and sits them both down on the edge of the bed. Pliant after so long without tenderness, Kaneki acquiesces silently. Their footsteps are quiet in the apartment, and it smells vaguely stale after so long being empty. There is no food left in there to rot.
“Talk to me, Kaneki.”
Kaneki leans down and buries his face in his hands. “I can’t,” he whimpers.
“You can. Please.”
Kaneki erupts into a strangled sob. “I’m so tired, Hide.” A hand curls around the back of his neck, warmer from their handholding. “I don’t know how long I can do this.”
Hide scoots closer and rests his head on Kaneki’s bent back, his arm sliding down and folding into a hug around his waist. “How long you can do what?” he prompts, voice low.
Kaneki’s breath rushes out of him as he realises what he’s about to do. He doesn’t want to, but deep down he thinks he needs to and Hide has gently dragged that part up to the surface where he can no longer supress it. “I’m searching for Kanou,” he starts, bolstered by Hide’s encouraging nod against his shoulder, “because when he operated on me after, after the beams fell, he… turned me into a ghoul. I’m not human anymore and I don’t know how to live like this and, and before, at least, it was a bit manageable, but after Yamori I can’t think right or feel right, and I had to leave them behind and I wish I fucking hadn’t and people are relying on me, but I don’t—I can’t—”
Hide’s head presses down on his shoulder, and he interrupts Kaneki’s breathless rambling. “Hey, Kaneki, it’s okay.” It’s not okay, but hearing Hide’s voice makes the air enter his lungs more smoothly so he pushes that thought to the back of his mind to torment him later, when Hide isn’t with him anymore. It takes a few seconds of inhaling and exhaling along with Hide for Kaneki to realise just what he had confessed. He stiffens.
“Shh, no, stop. Don’t go anywhere,” Hide says immediately. His arm tightens around him like a clingy octopus. “I knew.”
Kaneki tries to whirl around but despite his lack of ghoul-strength, Hide holds him in place. “You—”
“After Nishio-san in that alley. I was awake when you were talking with the manager – pieced some of it together,” he admits.
Kaneki blinks tears out of his eyes. “And you don’t…”
“You’re my best friend. Always. Being a, what? A half-ghoul? It won’t change that.” Finally, he lifts his head off Kaneki and looks him in the eye. “You are my best friend,” he repeats. Kaneki’s chin wobbles and he cries. Hide holds him through it until he’s done and neither of them mention the wet splotches on Kaneki’s shoulder when his face had rested.
“Will you go back to avoiding me now?”
The bluntness ignites the tension running through Kaneki’s shoulders. He forcibly relaxes and answers, “No. You won’t let me – I can’t get rid of you.” Hide laughs and nods; he leans back on his hands and tips his face to the ceiling.
“So, Kanou. What have you got on him so far?”