“Okay,” he said finally, and let it drop.

Katsuko didn’t. “I’ve already said too much,” she said, eyes raking over his face. “And I can’t tell you much more, anyways.” There was a subtle, bitter emphasis on can’t. She pushed herself up suddenly from her seat. “I should go. It’s been a long day.”

Alternatively, he was being an idiot, since redacted meant classified, which meant she doubtless couldn’t talk about it even if she wanted to, so all he’d done was stir up a hornet’s nest and left no outlet for the sting. She was leaving.

He shoved up hard enough that his chair toppled over backwards. “Wait—”

Katsuko hesitated, looking faintly hunted.

Raidou didn’t have any pretty words to hand her, or much that would make it better, but he knew he didn’t want her rattling about alone with ghosts in her head. “Don’t go. I still, uh— I said we can watch TV, and you haven’t even finished your food. And, uh.” She hadn’t fled yet. He moved around the table, to the edge of her personal space, and stopped. “There’s like eight-hundred pieces of mockery you still need to give me about Tousaki, and I’m not doing all the dishes by myself.”

She glanced down at the table littered with plastic take-out containers. “What dishes?”

“Just don’t go,” Raidou said. “Please?”

Katsuko blinked at him. “Uh,” she said, in a perfect mirror of his inability to do words, but some of the flight-tension uncoiled, swept aside by surprise. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Raidou said, relieved.

They stood next to his kitchen table, about a foot and a half away from each other, separated by a barrier of exhaustion and unexpected awkwardness, which had never happened before. Katsuko’s shoulders drooped slowly; she was pale and sharper-edged than she’d been a week ago. She’d lost weight on this mission, as well as control. She tipped her head back and gave him a helpless look. Now what, taichou?

Three days ago, she’d plummeted off the back of a demon queen and nearly died. He’d known what to do then.

It had needed much less words.

Maybe he should have just done that instead, but perhaps it wasn’t too late now. He stepped forward, deliberately telegraphing his intent, and put one arm around Katsuko’s narrow shoulders, bent like a question mark. She ducked her head, tension twanging like a harpstring wire, then folded into him. He wrapped both of his arms around her, hard, and dropped his chin down on the wild mess of her flyaway hair. This close, he could feel the low-level shiver vibrating through her muscles.

Definitely should have done this first.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, into her hair.